21 large quantities that they easily made a hundred-fold gain. TheseMouros also collect a great deal of ivory, which they find near Sofala and also sell to the kingdom of Cambay atfive or six ducats a quintal, they also sell some very good ambergris that they bring from the Hucicas. These Mouros are black men and some are brown, some speak Arabic and the majority use the local language which is the same as the gentiles’. They cover themselves below the waist with cotton and silk cloths, they wear other cloths over their shoulders like cloaks, and turbans on their heads, some of them wear small caps made from quarters of scarlet and other woollen cloths of many different colours, and camlets and other silks. Their staple diet is maize, rice and meat, [and] fish. Many hippopotami come out of the mouth of this river to graze; in the water they swim like fish, they have tusks like elephants’, but they are small for the size of the animal. This ivory is better than elephants’, whiter and tougher and never loses its colour. In the area surrounding Sofala, there are many wild and very large elephants, lynxes, and lyons and deer, and many other beasts; the land comprises grasslands and mountains, with many streams of fine water. In Sofala itself, they are again making a large amount of cotton and they weave it into many white cloths, and because they do not know how to dye them, or for a lack of dye, they take blue cloths from Cambay and unravel them and then wind them into a ball again and use this thread and a white one to make manyflecked cloths which they earn a lot of gold from. This was the remedy they found after they saw that we cut off the zambucos from reaching them, and that the merchandise could only reach them through the factors that Our Lord and King has in his factories and fortresses there. The Great Kingdom of Benamatapa Heading inland from this place, one comes to the great kingdom of Benamatapa which is ruled by gentiles, whom the Mouros call kaffirs. They are black men, they go naked, they merely cover their pudenda
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