A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels — Volume 01: Arranged in Systematic Order: Forming a Complete History of the Origin and Progress of Navigation, Discovery, and Commerce, by Sea and Land, from the Earliest Ages to the Present TimeKerr, Robert
History
A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels — Volume 01: Arranged in Systematic Order: Forming a Complete History of the Origin and Progress of Navigation, Discovery, and Commerce, by Sea and Land, from the Earliest Ages to the Present Time
Kerr, Robert
Voyages and travels
Herkend, and having sailed through it, they touch at a place called
Lajabalus, where the inhabitants do not understand Arabic, or any other
language in use among merchants. They wear no clothes, are white, and weak
in their feet. It is said their women are not to be seen, and that the men
leave the island in canoes, hollowed out of one piece, to go in quest of
them, and carry them cocoa nuts, mousa, and palm wine. This last liquor is
white, and when drank fresh is sweet like honey, and has the taste of cocoa
nut milk; if kept some time, it becomes as strong as wine, but after some
days changes to vinegar. These people give this wine, and the small
quantities of amber which is thrown up on their coasts, for bits of iron,
the bargains being made by signs; but they are extremely alert, and are
very apt to carry off iron from the merchants without making any return.
From Lajabalus the ships steer for Calabar, the name of a kingdom on the
right hand beyond the Indies, which depends on the kingdom of Zabage, _bar_
signifying a coast in the language of the country. The inhabitants are
dressed in those sorts of striped garments which the Arabs call Fauta, and
they commonly wear only one at a time, which fashion is common to people of
all ranks. At this place they take in water, which is drawn from wells that
are fed by springs, and which is preferred to that which is procured from
cisterns or tanks. Calabar is about a month's voyage from a place called
Kaukam, which is almost upon the skirts of the sea of Herkend. In ten days
after this, ships reach Betuma, from whence, in ten days more, they come to
Kadrange. In all the islands and peninsulas of the Indies, water is to be
found by digging. In this last mentioned place there is a very lofty
mountain, which is entirely inhabited by slaves and fugitives. From thence,
in ten days, they arrive at Senef, where is fresh water, and from whence
comes the aromatic wood which we call Hud al Senefi. Here is a king; the
inhabitants are black, and they wear two striped garments. Having watered
at this place, it is ten days passage to Sanderfulat, an island which has
fresh water. They then steer through the sea of Sanji, and so to the gates
of China; for so they call certain rocks and shallows which form a narrow
strait in that sea, through which the ships are obliged to pass. It
requires a month to sail from Sanderfulat to China, and it takes eight
whole days to steer through among the rocks and shoals.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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