_ 91 _ From here to Ormuz are sent all the purified water and preserves which are consumed there. It is under the rule of Shah Tamás. The men who reside there are very fair-skinned and amiable, and the women are the most beautiful in Persia. It is fifteen days’ journey short of Kashan. From the place I mentioned we arrived on the same day at another small place called [Catú ?Kaduiye]. Item: [Catú] is a place like the others where we had passed with similar people, cool with plantations and orchards. They eat very white bread made in rolls, for this is their kind of bread. Seven or eight rolls cost one damasin, cockerels half a damasin, a chicken was one damasin, a large bunch of grapes one damasin; a very fine Rabada lamb ten, a large goat for six. This was the price throughout the greater part of the journey. Everything is sold by weight, because in Persia even straw and firewood are sold by weight. There are thirty doos in a damasin. On 3 September we passed a very well built castle of French-style lath and plaster and camped a couple of musket-shots’ distance in front of it beside a river of very good water. We had spent three days crossing desert when we met a Bedouin on horseback, armed like the ones mentioned earlier. He told us that there were fifteen horsemen behind a hill, who were disaffected from Shah
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