This King Loved
Strangers, Especially Merchants Who Traded In His Dominions, Insomuch
That He Took No Customs From Them, Neither Did He Vex Them With Any
Grievous Impositions, Only That Each Ship That Came Thither Paid Some
Small Affair In Proportion To Her Tonnage.
Owing to this good treatment
twenty-five ships, great and small, used to lade yearly in the port of
Orissa, mostly with rice and with different kinds of white cotton
cloths, oil of _zerzerline_ or _verzino_ which is made from a seed, and
answers well for eating or frying fish, lac, long pepper, ginger, dry
and candied mirabolans, and great store of cloth made from a kind of
silk which grows on trees requiring no labour or cultivation, as when
the _bole_ or round pod is grown to the size of an orange, all they have
to do is to gather it. About sixteen years before this, the Pagan king
of Orissa was defeated and slain and his kingdom conquered, by the king
of _Patane_[162], who was also king of the greatest part of Bengal.
After the conquest of Orissa, this king imposed a duty of 20 per centum
on all trade, as had been formerly paid in his other dominions. But this
king did not enjoy his acquisitions long, being soon conquered by
another tyrant, who was the great Mogul of Delhi, Agra, and Cambaia,
against whom the king of Patane made very little resistance.
[Footnote 161: Cuttack, at the head of the Delta of the Mahamuddy or
Gongah river, in lat.
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