_ 289 _ which are only used by fishermen. Taking their children and wives, they asked Ormuz for an uninhabited island which is called Lareca (Larej) and lies a league from that port, where they could live. As payment for this gift they promised to protect the strait from other thieves, namely the Noitaques, who lived along the coast beyond the Sind.(A) Several opinions were given regarding this request, and finally the worst was adopted. For the captain of the fortress at that time, either not wanting to decide upon the best or most effective form of negotiating an agreement, or seeing that by offering to protect the strait from the pirates (which would indeed be an easy thing for them, since as they were pearl fishermen and were constantly travelling along there, they could act as a sufficient hindrance to the other robbers, who were much inferior to them) saw that the Niquelus would then cause a situation whereby the reason for maintaining these fleets would cease and the means through which the captains of the fortress created four or five rich servants would be brought to an end. (A) Noilaques are the inhabitants of the Beluchistan Litoral. ‘Nautaques, people who live in the Termam and Macram regions (Kerman and Mekran) which lie between the Indus and the bar of the straits of Ormuz. Their actual name is Baluchis, but they were given the name of ‘nautaques’ by the robbers, which name in their language means in ours ‘robbers of the sea’. Barros Dec 111 7.2-C.
RkJQdWJsaXNoZXIy OTg0NzAy