- E.]
[Footnote 159: Perhaps the mixed metal called tutenag may be here
meant. - E.]
The voyages which are under the jurisdiction of the captain of Malacca
are the following. Every year he sends a small ship to Timor to load
white sandal wood, the best being to be had in that island. He also
sends another small ship yearly to Cochin-China for aloes wood, which is
only to be procured in that country, which is on the continent adjoining
to China. I could never learn in what manner that wood grows, as the
people of Cochin-China will not allow the Portuguese to go into the
land except for wood and water, bringing provisions and merchandise and
all other things they want to their ships in small barks, so that a
market is held daily on the deck of the ship till she is laden. Another
ship goes yearly from Malacca for Siam to lade _Verzino_[160]. All these
voyages belong exclusively to the captain of Malacca, and when he is not
disposed to make them on his own account he sells them to others.
[Footnote 160: From another part of this voyage it appears that this is
some species of seed from which oil was expressed. - E.]
SECTION XV.
_Of the City of Siam_.
Siam was the imperial seat of the kingdom of that name and a great city,
till the year 1567, when it was taken by the king of Pegu, who came by
land with a prodigious army of 1,400,000 men, marching for four months,
and besieged Siam for twenty-two mouths, during which he lost a vast
number of men, and at lost won the city.