[Sidenote: Their houses, and maner of eating.] Their houses (as I haue sayd) are for the most part made of bricke, not burned but only dried in the Sunne: In their houses they haue but litle furniture of houshold stuffe, except it be their carpets and some copper worke: for all their kettles and dishes wherein they eate, are of copper. They eate on the ground, sitting on carpets crosse legged as do Tailors. There is no man so simple but he sitteth on a carpet better or worse, and the whole house or roume wherein he sitteth is wholy couered with carpets. Their houses are all with flat roofes couered with earth: and in the Sommer time they lie vpon them all night. [Sidenote: Bondmen and bondwomen.] They haue many bond seruants both men and women. Bondmen and bondwomen, is one of the best kind of merchandise that any man may bring. When they buy any maydes or yong women, they yse to fede them in all partes, as with vs men doe horses: when one hath bought a yong woman, if he like her, be will keepe her for his owne vse as long as him listeth, and then selleth her to an other, who doth the like with her. So that one woman is sometimes sold in the space of foure or fiue yeeres, twelue, or twentie times. If a man keepe a bondwoman for his owne vse, and if hee find her to be false to him, and giue her body to any other, he may kill her if he will. [Sidenote: Women bought and sold, and let to hire.] When a merchant or traueller commeth to any towne where he entendeth to tary any time, he hireth a woman, or sometimes 2. or 3. during his abode there. And when he commeth to an other towne, he doeth the like in the same also: for there they vse to put out their women to hire, as wee do here hackney horses. [Sidenote: Abundance of oile issuing out of the ground.] There is a very great riuer which runneth through the plaine of Iauat, which falleth into the Caspian sea, by a towne called Bachu, neere vnto which towne is a strange thing to behold. For there issueth out of the ground a marueilous quantitie of oile, which oile they fetch from the uttermost bounds of all Persia: it serueth all the countrey to burn in their houses. This oyle is blacke, and is called Nefte: [Footnote: These springs are still in existence.] they vse to cary it throughout all the Countrey vpon kine and asses, of which you shall oftentimes meet with foure or fiue hundred in a company. [Sidenote: Oleum Petroleum.] There is also by the said towne of Bachu another kind of oyle which is white and very precious: and is supposed to be the same that here is called Petroleum. There is also not far from Shamaky, a thing like vnto tarre, and issueth out of the ground, [Footnote: These springs are still in existence.] whereof we haue made the proofe, that in our ships it serueth well in the stead of tarre.