"Here four or five thousand slaves may be purchased, on account of the numerous population, and its being lawful for the father to sell the children. The women are handsome, and those of the nobles chaste, which is not the case with those of the lower classes. There are monasteries or convents for the women, into which the nobles put their daughters, when they cannot match them in marriage according to their wishes. The married women, when their husbands die, must, as a point of honour, die with them, and if they should be afraid of death they are put into the convents. "The kingdom descends from father to son, and not from uncle to nephew, (son of the sister), as among the Malabars and other infidels in India. "They are fond of rich arms, ornamented with gold and inlaid work. Their _krises_ are gilt, and also the point of their lances. Many other particulars might be added (but we reserve them for our geography[11]), concerning the productions of this island, in which upwards of thirty thousand quintals of pepper are collected annually." Decad. iv. Chapter 13. "In the year 1522, Jorge Albuquerque, governor of Malacca, equipped a vessel to carry Henriquez Lerne, with a competent suite and certain presents, to the king Samiam above mentioned, for the purpose of establishing a commercial intercourse. Lerne was well received by the king, who was fully sensible of the importance of such a connection, in the war in which he was then engaged with the Moors (Mahomedans); and, therefore, he requested that, for the protection of the trade, the king of Portugal should erect a fortress, and that he would load as many ships as he chose with pepper, in return for such merchandise as the country required. And further, he (the king) obliged himself, as a pledge of his friendship, to give him annually a thousand bags of pepper, from the day on which the building of the fortress should commence. * * * * * "These things being concluded and presents exchanged, Lerne returned to Malacca, where he was well received by Albuquerque, who immediately communicated the result to the king of Portugal, who approved of all that had been done. * * * * * "Francisco de Sá was in consequence dispatched with six vessels (the names of which and of their commanders are enumerated), with which he called at Malacca, and accompanied the expedition against Bintam (then in the possession of the expelled king of Malacca), on leaving which he was overtaken by a dreadful storm, and one of his vessels, commanded by Dironte Coelho, reached the port of Calapa (where the fort was to be built), where she was driven on shore, and all the crew perished by the hands of the Moors (Mahomedans), who were then masters of the country, having a few days before taken the town from the native king, who had concluded the treaty with the King of Portugal, and given him the site on which to erect the fortress.