ne they call Ozeah, and another Zecchiah.
Before we come to Balsara by one dayes iourney, the two riuers of Tigris
and Euphrates meet, and there standeth a castle called Curna, kept by the
Turks, where all marchants pay a small custome. Here the two riuers ioyned
together begin to be eight or nine miles broad: here also it beginneth to
ebbe and flow, and the water ouerflowing maketh the countrey all about very
fertile of corne, rice, pulse, and dates. The towne of Balsara is a mile
and an halfe in circuit: all the buildings, castle and wals, are made of
bricke, dried in the Sun. The Turke hath here fiue hundred Ianisaries,
besides other souldiers continually in garison and pay, but his chiefe
strength is of gallies which are about fiue and twenty or thirty very faire
and furnished with goodly ordinance. To this port of Balsara come monethly
diuers ships from Ormuz, laden with all sorts of Indian marchandise, as
spices, drugs, Indico and Calecut cloth. These ships are vsually from forty
to threescore tunnes, hauing their planks sowed together with corde made of
the barke of Date trees, and in stead of Occam they vse the shiuerings of
the barke of the sayd trees, and of the same they also make their tackling.
[Sidenote: Ships made without yron in the Persian gulfe.] They haue no kind
of yron worke belonging to these vessels, saue only their ankers. From this
place six dayes sailing downe the gulfe, they goe to a place called Baharem
in the mid way to Ormus: there they fish for pearles foure moneths in the
yeere, to wit, in Iune, Iuly, August, and September. [Sidenote: Zelabdim
Echebar king of Cambaia.] My abode in Balsara was iust sixe moneths, during
which time I receiued diuers letters from M. Iohn Newberry from Ormus, who
as he passed that way with her Maiesties letters to Zelabdim Echebar king
of Cambaia, and vnto the mighty emperour of China, was traiterously there
arrested, and all his company, by the Portugals, and afterward sent
prisoner to Goa; where after a long and cruell imprisonmeat, he and his
companions were deliuered vpon sureties, not to depart the towne without
leaue, at the sute of one father Thomas Steuens, an English religious man
which they found there: but shortly after three of them escaped, whereof
one, to wit, M. Ralph Fitch, is since come into England. The fourth, which
was a painter called Iohn Story, became religious in the college of S. Paul
in Goa, as we vnderstood by their letters. [Sidenote: H