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
places vpon the riuers side we met with troops of Arabians, of whom we
bought milke, butter, egges, and lambs, and gaue them in barter, (for they
care not for money) glasses, combes, corall, amber, to hang about their
armes and necks, and for churned milke we gaue them bread and pomgranat
peeles, wherewith they vse to tanne their goats skinnes which they churne
withall. [Sidenote: The Arabian women weare golde rings in their nostrels.]
Their haire, apparell, and colour are altogether like to those vagabond
Egyptians, which heretofore haue gone about in England. Their women all
without exception weare a great round ring in one of their nostrels, of
golde, siluer, or yron, according to their ability, and about their armes
and smalles of their legs they haue hoops of golde, siiuer or yron. All of
them as wel women and children as men, are very great swimmers, and often
times swimming they brought vs milke to our barke in vessels vpon their
heads. These people are very theeuish, which I prooued to my cost: for they
stole a casket of mine, with things of good value in the same, from vnder
my mans head as he was asleepe: and therefore trauellers keepe good watch
as they passe downe the riuer. [Sidenote: Euphrates described.] Euphrates
at Birrah is about the breadth of the Thames at Lambeth, and in some places
narrower, in some broader: it runneth very swiftly, almost as fast as the
riuer of Trent: it hath diuers sorts of fish in it, but all are scaled,
some as bigge as salmons, like barbils. We landed at Felugia the eight and
twentieth of Iune, where we made our abode seuen dayes, for lacke of camels
to cary our goods to Babylon: the heat at that time of the yere is such in
those parts, that men are loth to let out their camels to trauell. This
Felugia is a village of some hundred houses, and a place appointed for
discharging of such goods as come downe the riuer: the inhabitants are
Arabians. Not finding camels here, we were constrained to vnlade our goods,
and hired an hundred asses to cary our marchandises onely to New Babylon
ouera short desert, in crossing whereof we spent eighteene houres
trauelling by night, and part of the morning, to auoid the great heat.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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