_ 582 _ Tomé bastion of the fortress of Diu. The fortress has a ditch surrounding it and water flows into it from the river and goes out the other side, and it is all completed. This fortress has many very fine cannon and in the fortress is a foundry which every day casts very good shots. In this fortress there are six hundred Turks and two hundred Abyssinians and Arabs, all of whom are musketeers. Khwaja Shafar made this fortress expecting it to contain the Turkish fleet(A) If the Governor had wanted to attack this fortress when he went to the Strait he would have taken it, because it had not been completed and one bastion was cracked, which has since been repaired, and a stretch of wall was not finished. Khwaja Shafar told this to a Portuguese who went to Surat a few days before, but now the governors would not be able to take the fortress. The Governor sent an ambassador to Cambay about matters concerning Diu and Bassein(B) in which he asked (A) In his História do Segundo Cerco de Dio (History of the Second Siege of Diu), Leonardo Nunes asserts that Khwaja Shafar had acquiredlarge companies of foreign soldiers, Turks and Christians of foreign renegade nations.... He also ordered a lot of gunpowder to be made, for bombards and muskets, as much as could be made in seven years, because that is how long it took to equip it. (Op.cit., pp. 5-7). It is clear that at the time D. Manuel was writing (1541) preparations were well advanced. (B) It seems that he had sent to ask for the entire revenues of Bassein
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