_ 500 _ peculiarities of men and about the communication from which this derived. In a word, according to what Your Highness wrote, the father and son report the same news of Basra that Franscisco Barreto brought. This gentleman claims very convincingly that wood was brought for thirteen galleys to the said island. The wood came by sea from Antolia to Tripoli in Syria and from there on mules to Aleppo and along the Euphrates to Basra. He also reports that a canal has been opened seven leagues long between the Euphrates and the Tigris to facilitate the transport of wood to Basra. He maintains and claims that neither on the banks of those rivers nor in that area was there any woods or forests where any materials for the ships could be cut. I did not send this Jew to Your Highness as he requested, because Francisco Barreto had furnished the same news and by chance, had brought a duplicate of the letter he was bringing from the Viceroy. As I did not consider it prudent or sensible to incur unnecessary expense, I hoped either to send him paid for out of his father’s salary, or in some convenient fashion that would not cost three hundred cruzados, as would be necessary now.
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