172 referred to, and it is only in this inland kingdom that they follow this horrendous practice. The City and Kingdom of Malacca There is a spit of land sticking out into the sea from this kingdom of Siam, which is like a cape, and then the coast turns back towards China. At its tip lies a small kingdom with a very large city, which in days gone by was ruled by Siam. Many foreign Mouros settled there as traders and became so rich that they converted the locals to Mouros and rebelled against the King of Siam, and thus as they were all Mouros, they became an independent kingdom. All kinds of Mouros and gentile principal merchants now live here, many from Coromandel and men with enormous wealth and many large ships called junks. They trade all kinds of commodities with a variety of places. Many ships also come here to load up on sugar. Many fine four-masted junks bring back lots of silk; very fine silk thread; many porcelains; damasks; brocades; coloured satins; musk; rhubarb; different coloured twisted silk thread; saltpetre; plenty of fine silver; many pearls and rough seed-pearls; golden boxes; fans and many other adornments, which is sold at a good price to the local merchants, and in return they acquire pepper and frankincense; Cambay cloths; scarlets; saffron; sculpted coral necklaces and coral in its natural state; many coloured cottons; white muslins from Bengal; vermillion; quicksilver; opium, and many other spices and remedies from Cambay, and one which is unknown to us and which I call cacho and another called pucho, and mangicão, which is brought overland from the Levant to Cambay via Mecca and which is worth a lot in China and Java. The great junk ships come from the kingdom of Java to Malacca. Their design is quite different to ours, with very thick timber, because, when they get old, they put another layer of wood over the existing planks and thus they
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