_ 93 _ All the water used is brought into boats from the mainland and neighboring islands, with large supplies of wheat, barley, and cattle, fruit, many hens and an abundance of quinces, grapes, melons, peas, peaches, plums, walnuts, and other fruits such as we have, ripe and dried, for the healthy and the sick, which come from Persia and neighboring lands. The King has a very fine fortress on this island, well supplied with artillery and munitions and cisterns, water-tanks and machines for making gunpowder, which is manufactured continuously, much of it being sent from here to India every year. His Majesty had five hundred enlisted Portuguese soldiers in this fortress who have to be paid, apart from many others who are paid every three months, receiving a quarterly wage which is paid from the revenues of the customs house. He has a dockyard for merchant ships and galliots, for the ordinary fleets which sail from there to guard the Strait on the lookout for Turks, and to bring and take convoys of ships which come and go with goods for the customs house. In the city, there are about two hundred Portuguese casados and many people of the country who are Christians and casados, rather over seven thousand souls, apart from Portuguese merchants who come and go and soldiers who
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