The Principal Navigations, Voyages, Traffiques and Discoveries of the English Nation — Volume 10: Asia, Part IIIHakluyt, Richard
History
The Principal Navigations, Voyages, Traffiques and Discoveries of the English Nation — Volume 10: Asia, Part III
Hakluyt, Richard
Discoveries in geography -- English; Voyages and travels
make warres against him, and so driue him out of his countrey for them.
They haue no horses in all the countrey. The elephants be not so great as
those of Pegu, which be monstrous huge: but they say all other elephants do
feare them, and none dare fight with them, though they be very small. Their
women haue a cloth bound about them from their middle to their knee: and
all the rest is bare. All of them be blacke and but little, both men and
women. Their houses are very little, made of the branches of the palmer or
coco-tree, and couered with the leaues of the same tree.
The eleuenth of March we sailed from Ceylon, and so doubled the cape of
Comori. Not far from thence, betweene Ceylon and the maine land of
Negapatan, they fish for pearles. And there is fished euery yere very much;
which doth serue all India, Cambaia, and Bengala, it is not so orient as
the pearle of Baharim in the gulfe of Persia. From cape de Comori we passed
by Coulam, which is a fort of the Portugals: from whence commeth great
store of pepper, which commeth for Portugall: for oftentimes there ladeth
one of the caracks of Portugall. Thus passing the coast we arriued in
Cochin the 22 of March, where we found the weather warme, but scarsity of
victuals: for here groweth neither corne nor rice: and the greatest part
commeth from Bengala. They haue here very bad water, for the riuer is farre
off. [Sidenote: People with swollen legges mentioned also by Ioh. Huygen.]
This bad water causeth many of the people to be like lepers, and many of
them haue their legs swollen as bigge as a man in the waste, and many of
them are scant able to go. These people here be Malabars, and of the race
of the Naires of Calicut: and they differ much from the other Malabars.
These haue their heads very full of haire, and bound vp with a string: and
there doth appeare a bush without the band wherewith it is bound. The men
be tall and strong, and good archers with a long bow and a long arrow,
which is their best weapon: yet there be some caliuers among them, but they
handle them badly.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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