"Their houses are kept clean and neat, with good household stuff, having gardens inclosed with canes, in which they grow tobacco and plantains. For dinner, a board was set upon tressels, on which was spread a fine new mat, and stone benches stood around, on which the guests sat. First, water was brought to each in a cocoa-shell, and poured into a wooden platter, and the rinds of cocoa-nuts were used instead of towels. There was then set before the company boiled rice, roasted plantains, quarters of hens, and pieces of goat's flesh broiled. After grace said, they fell to their meat, using bread made of cocoa-nut kernels, beaten up with honey, and fried. The drink was palamito wine, and the milk of the cocoa-nuts. Those who went to see the sultan, named _Amir Adell_, found all things much in the same manner, only that his behaviour was more light, and he made haste to get drunk with some wine carried to him by the English. The people of these islands are strict Mahomedans, and very jealous of letting their women or mosques be seen. For, on some of the English coming near a village, they shut them up, and threatened to kill them if they came nearer. Many of them speak and write Arabic, and some few of them Portuguese, as they trade with Mosambique in junks of forty tons burden, built, caulked, and rigged all out of the cocoa-nut tree. Here we bought oxen and cows, fat but small, Arabian sheep, hens, oranges, lemons, and limes in abundance, paying for them in calicoes, hollands, sword-blades, dollars, glasses, and other trifles."--T.R.