Here we had an opportunity to furnish ourselves with a plentiful stock of excellent beef, which, as I said before, we cured with little or no salt, by drying it in the sun; and, I believe, we laid in such a store, that, in all our three vessels, we had near a hundred and fifty tons of it; and it was of excellent use to us, and served us through the whole voyage. There was little else to be had in this place that was fit to be carried to sea; except that, as there was plenty of milk, some of our men, who were more dexterous than others, made several large cheeses; nor were they very far short of English cheese, only that we were but indifferent dairy folks. Our men made some butter also, and salted it to keep, but it grew rank and oily, and was of little use to us. It was on the 15th of December that we left this place, a country fruitful, populous, full of cattle, large and excellent good beef, and very fat; and the land able to produce all manner of good things; but the people wild, naked, black, barbarous, perfectly untractable, and insensible of any state of life being better than their own. We stood away towards the shore of Arabia, till we passed the line, and came into the latitude of 18° north, and then stood away east, and east-by-north, for the English factories of Surat, and the coast of Malabar; not that we had any business there, or designed any, only that we had a mind to take on board a quantity of rice, if we could come at it; which at last, we effected by a Portuguese vessel, which we met with at sea, bound to Goa, from the Gulf of Persia. We chased her, and brought her too, indeed, as if we resolved to attack and take the ship; but, finding a quantity of rice on board, which was what we wanted, with a parcel of coffee, we took all the rice, but paid the supercargo, who was a Persian or Armenian merchant, very honestly for the whole parcel, his full price, and to his satisfaction; as for the coffee, we had no occasion for it. We put in at several ports on the Indian coast for fresh water and fresh provisions, but came near none of the factories, because we had no mind to discover ourselves; for though we were to sail through the very centre of the India trade, yet it was perfectly without any business among them. We met indeed on this coast with some pearl fishers, who had been in the mouth of the Arabian Gulf, and had a large quantity of pearl on board. I would have traded with them for goods, but they understood nothing but money, and I refused to part with it; upon which the fellows gave our supercargo some scornful language, which though he did not well understand what they said, yet he pretended to take it as a great affront, and threatened to make prize of their barks, and slaves of the men; upon which they grew very humble; and one of them, a Malabar Indian, who spoke a little English, spoke for them, that they would willingly trade with us for such goods as we had; whereupon I