_ 372 _ We left there and, sailing with a favourable wind, we arrived in Ormuz, which is a very populous city, capital of the Kingdom and situated in the middle of the Persian Gulf, a league or two more or less from Persia and a little further from Arabia Felix. It is owned by the Abyssinians and populated by Arabs, Persians and every other nation in the world. It is a great sea-port for all the merchandise of Persia, Arabia, Turkey, Mesopotamia, Venice and the House of Mecca, as well as Tartary Major and Minor. Indeed, if another Babylon existed in the world, and even more so a Sodom, this was it, because I found it was seriously plagued by three public vices. And because they are public I shall not hesitate to talk about them. Because of the bad reputation of these sins, Fr. Superior Francisco would have very much wished to attend to them if there had not been the obstacle that the journey to Japan put in his way. He ordered me to leave with great haste lest I found it destroyed. The first sin was sodomy, principally among the Moors; and I do not wish to talk about a public brothel belonging to some local Christians which I destroyed by taking them as prisoners to the college that I built. The second vice was that there was no difference between the Christian and the Moor in their eating and
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