162 forms a bay between two land masses. Well inside the bay on its Northern side stands a great city inhabited by Mouros called Bengal. It has a fine seaport; a Mouros king, and its inhabitants are handsome white men. Many foreigners from different places, such as Arabs; Persians, and Abyssinians and Indians also live there, because this is a large and fertile country, healthy and temperate. They are all great merchants and have large ships like those from Mecca; others from China called junks, which are very big and can carry a lot of cargo, which they use to sail to Coromandel; Malacca; Sumatra; Pegu; Cambay, and Ceylon. They trade in all sorts of merchandise here and in other places. There are many cotton fields, excellent sugar-plantations; ginger and chili here. They also make many kinds of veryfine coloured cloths here for clothes, and some white ones which are sold to many different places and are worth a lot. There is one kind that they call sarbands, a very thin sort of cloth, popular among us for making ladies’ headresses and the Arabians and Persians for making their caps. They make such a large quantity of them that many ships take a cargo of them away. They make other kinds called mamonas, duguazas, chautures, and sinabafas, which are the best ones and those that the Mouros like to make shirts from. All these fabrics are sold in pieces which are twenty three or twenty four Portuguese yards’ long. They are very cheap here; men spin them on wheels and weave them. There is plenty of fine white cane sugar in this city too, but they do not know how to make it into loaves and so they bundle it up loose in untanned leather pouches, which are finely stitched, and they load up a large quantity of it which they sell in a variety of places, as it is an excellent commodity. When these merchants could sail freely and without fear to Malabar and Cambay, a quintal of sugar sold for one thousand three hundred reais in Malabar; a very good chautur, six hundred reais; and a sinabafa, two ducats, and afine piece of linen, three
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