[67] "The 6th October, [1592] they met with a Malacca ship of 700 tons, which, after her main-yard was shot through, yielded.... They found on board fifteen pieces of brass cannon, 300 butts of Canary and Nipar or Palm-wine, with very strong raisin wine; all sorts of haberdashery-wares, as hats, red knit caps, and stockings of Spanish wool; velvets, taffeties, camblets, and silks; abundance of suckets, rice, Venice glasses, counterfeit stones (brought by an Indian from Venice, to cheat the Indians), _Playing Cards_, and two or three packs of French paper." The prize was taken in the Straits of Malacca; and the articles of European manufacture appear to have been brought to Malacca by the Portuguese.--The Naval Chronicle; or Voyages of the most celebrated English Navigators, vol. i, p. 392. 8vo. 1760. [68] Burnes's Travels into Bokhara, vol. ii, p. 169. Second edit. 1835. [69] Card-playing appears to be a very common amusement in Hindostan.--"I could remind or perhaps inform the fashionable gamesters of St. James's Street, that before England ever saw a dice-box, many a main has been won and lost under a palm-tree, in Malacca, by the half-naked Malays, with wooden and painted dice; and that he could not pass through a bazaar in this country [Hindostan] without seeing many parties playing with cards, most cheaply supplied to them by leaves of the cocoa-nut or palm-tree, dried, and their distinctive characters traced with an iron style.... At the corner of every street you may see the Gentoo-bearers gambling over chalked-out squares, with small stones for men, and with wooden dice; or Coolies playing with cards of the palm-leaf. Nay, in a pagoda under the very shadow of the idol, I have seen Brahmins playing with regular packs of Chinese cards."--Sketches of India: written by an Officer for Fireside Travellers at Home, pp. 68 and 100. Fourth edition, 1826. [70] For the reference to the Ching-tsze-tung, and the explanation of the passage relating to cards, I am indebted to Mr. S. Birch, of the British Museum. [71] "Second Mémoire sur les Relations politiques des Rois de France avec les Empereurs Mongols," dans le Journal Asiatique, de Septembre, 1822, p. 62. CHAPTER II. INTRODUCTION OF CARDS INTO EUROPE.