157 off his nose, then his ears and lips and as many parts of his body as he can, throwing them away, until he loses so much blood that he starts to faint. Then they cut his throat to kill him off and that is how they sacrifice him to their idol. And whoever wishes to reign over this church for a further twelve years will suffer a partial martyrdom, out of love for the idol, and must watch the idol and is made king there and then. The City of Kayal Further along the coast, one comes to a city called Kayal, which also belongs to the King of Quilon. It is inhabited by great Mouros and gentile merchants; they have an excellent seaport which is visited every year by many ships coming from Malabar, others from Coromandel and Bengal. Thus, all manner of goods coming from a variety of places are traded here. The local Chettys are important men, who have a lot of precious stones and seed-pearls, because the fishing rights belong to the King. A wealthy and respected Mouros from the town has for a long time leased the seed-pearlfishery. He is so rich and powerful that all the local people pay tribute to him as if he were the king; he serves justice on Mouros without any interference from the king. Those who fish for seed-pearls, fish during the week for themselves, on Fridays for the boat-owner and at the end of the season, theyfish a whole week for this Mouros, providing him with a lot of seed-pearls. The King of Quilon resides close by this city, as I said in the title, he is a great; rich and powerful king, with a large army. He has the best archers in the entire world in his country; he is always accompanied by about three to four hundred female archers who guard him. He has them taught from an early age, they wear very tight silk and cotton headbands; they are very swift. This king has many wars with the King of Vijayanagara, who is very powerful as I have already described, and he defends himself very well from him.
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