posted from Erzirum to Tauris, and was a great way gone before the Turk’s courrours came into those quarters; who, yet hearing of him, followed after as far as they durst, but could not overtake him. Alexander, comming to Tauris, understood that the court lay at Casbin, about twelve days’ journey farther up into the country. Comming thither the 14th of August of this year, 1571, he chanced to meet with certaine English marchants, with whom he had beene before acquainted; by whose helpe he not only got to speak with Ayder Tamas, the king’s third sonne, but learned of them also the manners and fashions of the Persian court, and how to beare himselfe therein. The Persians, by reason of the intolerable heate, doe most of their business at that time of the yeare by night. Wherefore, Alexander, about midnight brought in to Aider, declared unto him the cause of his comming: and the next night admitted into the speech of his aged father, delivered his letters of credence, and in the name of the Senat, declared unto him, with what perfidious dealing Selymus, the Turkish emperor, was about to take away Cyprus from the Venetians, with what greedinesse and pride he had set upon the Christians, and that discharged of that warre, he would of all likelyhood set upon the Persians; having the selfesame quarrell unto the Persians that he had unto the Venetians, that is, an ardent and insatiable desire of soveraignetie; a sufficient cause for the greedie Turke to repute every king, the richer that he was, the more his enemie. After that, setting foorth to the full the prowesse of the Christians, the wonderfull preparation they had made, both at sea and land, he persuaded the king, with all his power, to invade the Turke, now altogether busied in the warres of Cyprus; and to recover againe such parts of his kingdom as Solyman, the father of Selymus, had taken from him. Warres, he said, were more happily managed abroad than at home; that, sithence he alone (the Christian princes all then at quiet) had withstood the Turk’s whole force and power, he needed not now to doubt of his most prosperous successe, the Christian princes now joyning with him. That he was much unmindful of his former losses and wrongs, if he thought he enjoyed an assured peace, which he should find to be nothing els but a deferring of war unto more cruell times; and that the Turke, if he should overrun Cyprus, would forthwith turne his victorious arms upon him. The end of one warre was (as he said) but the beginning of another; and that the Turkish empire could never stay in one state; and that he would observe not the Turke’s words, but his deeds; and how that the Othoman emperours, according to the oportunitie of the times, used by turnes sometimes force, sometimes deceit, as best served their purposes. That no