_ 25 _ When Dom Pedro de Castelo Branco arrived in Ormuz eight and a half months ago, the customhouse yielded thousand and twenty-six lacs, fifty [...] and seventy-eight dinars. The Arab guazils seized half the income and spent it on totally unnecessary things in Ormuz, but your slave spent no more than a quarter of the income on expenses that could not be avoided. The expenditure of Ormuz is of this kind and size, whether caravans come or not. Dom Pedro de Castelo Branco, who has performed no small service in the protection of these lands and in profits for your treasury, will give you an account of these matters and of others. And [...] there are many things which seem to me cannot be written about the King of Ormuz being in the power of the Captain-Major of India, apart from [the fact] that Don Estevão da Gama sent for him, and he put his son Sultan Turun Shah, who in Your Highness's service, in his place, and ordered me and all the Moors to serve him, in Your Highness's name Thus, Captain Dom Estevão da Gama ordered me not to hand over to you anything from all the revenues of the King of Ormuz. I am so afraid that if this is known there will be disputes and damage in this city and nothing will be left for its upkeep. Today the King of Ormuz, a man who
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