_ 28 _ extends inland among them, a good country with gardens and groves of date-palms and wells of good drinking water. It is a town of seven hundred inhabitants with many stone houses with flat roofs, and mosques. The town is populated with many foreign merchants who come here to ship horses, dates and salted fish. As soon as they had arrived the Captain-in-Chief talked to his Captains and told them that he would be pleased to agree to peace with this place because it had an abundance of provisions so that when they were in Ormuz they could get supplies from here, and he had no worries about anything else. Hile they were talking an almadia arrived from the shore with two well-dressed Moors. They came aboard, and when they saw the Captain-in-Chief seated in a chair and the Captains and many others standing they threw themselves at his feet saying that they brought a message from the sheikh who was lord of the town, who told them to say that he did not want them to do the damage they had done in other towns and so he would promise him obedience and be his vassal and pay him the tribute collected for the King of Ormuz. The Captain-in-Chief asked them if they had brought a signed paper from the sheikh to that effect. They said that they had not, but if he sent someone to speak to the
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