The Portuguese in the Sea of Oman

_ 101 _ When Matias de Albuquerque was captain of Ormuz, I was with him one day on his terrace when the Moors brought him a woman of the tribe as prisoner. At the same time some large handsome patecas, which we call alencias, were being brought to him from the other direction, and Matias de Albuquerque asked this woman if she would consume the inside of one of those patecas. She said she would, and looking at it, after a quarter of an hour she told them to open the patecas and when it was opened, they found that it was completely empty inside. A few years later, the second time I went to India, I made a voyage to Ormuz, and on 19 March I was wrecked in bad weather. I reached safety and ching safety I walked with my companions, merchants and seaman, along the coast of Arabia. On reaching Kuryat, which is a fortress near Muscat, I was given hospitality by the Moor who was living there as captain. To entertain me, he invited me to go to the shore with my companions where I would see the death by drowning of a cafetar who had devoured the entrails of a brother of his, whom I found in his death throes. The cafetar taken under close guard and well bound into aboat, and they all went off to sink him. When they were a cannon ball shot from land, in seven brazas of water, they took the bound

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