When I Was In Calicut It Was Crowded With
Merchants From Almost Every Part Of The East, Especially A Prodigious
Number Of Mahometans.
There were many from Malacca and Bengal, from
Tanaserim, Pegu, and Coromandel, from the islands of Ceylon and Sumatra,
from all the cities and countries of Western India, and various
Persians, Arabians, Syrians, Turks, and Ethiopians.
As the idolaters do
not sail on the sea, the Mahometans are exclusively employed in
navigation, so that there are not less than 15,000 Mahometans resident
in Calicut, mostly born in that place. Their ships are seldom below the
burden of four or five hundred tons, yet all open and without decks.
They do not put any tow or oakum into the seams of their ships, yet join
the planks so artificially, that they hold out water admirably, the
seams being pitched and held together with iron nails, and the wood of
which their ships are built is better than ours. Their sails are made of
cotton cloth, doubled in the under parts, by which they gather much wind
and swell out like bags, having only one sail to each vessel. Their
anchors are of marble, eight spans long, having two on each side of the
ship, which are hung by means of double ropes. Their voyages are all
made at certain appointed times and seasons, as one time of the year
answers for one coast, and another season for other voyages, which must
all be regulated according to the changes of the weather.
Enter page number
PreviousNext
Page 159 of 842
Words from 42765 to 43018
of 230997
