ridden these two days you come to the Ocean Sea, and on the shore you find a city with a harbour which is called HORMOS.[NOTE 1] Merchants come thither from India, with ships loaded with spicery and precious stones, pearls, cloths of silk and gold, elephants’ teeth, and many other wares, which they sell to the merchants of Hormos, and which these in turn carry all over the world to dispose of again.  In fact, ’tis a city of immense trade.  There are plenty of towns and villages under it, but it is the capital.  The King is called RUOMEDAM AHOMET.  It is a very sickly place, and the heat of the sun is tremendous.  If any foreign merchant dies there, the King takes all his property.

In this country they make a wine of dates mixt with spices, which is very good.  When any one not used to it first drinks this wine, it causes repeated and violent purging, but afterwards he is all the better for it, and gets fat upon it.  The people never eat meat and wheaten bread except when they are ill, and if they take such food when they are in health it makes them ill.  Their food when in health consists of dates and salt-fish (tunny, to wit) and onions, and this kind of diet they maintain in order to preserve their health.[NOTE 2]

Their ships are wretched affairs, and many of them get lost; for they have no iron fastenings, and are only stitched together with twine made from the husk of the Indian nut.  They beat this husk until it becomes like horse-hair, and from that they spin twine, and with this stitch the planks of the ships together.  It keeps well, and is not corroded by the sea-water, but it will not stand well in a storm.  The ships are not pitched, but are rubbed with fish-oil.  They have one mast, one sail, and one rudder, and have no deck, but only a cover spread over the cargo when loaded.  This cover consists of hides, and on the top of these hides they put the horses which they take to India for sale.  They have no iron to make nails of, and for this reason they use only wooden trenails in their shipbuilding, and then stitch the planks with twine as I have told you.  Hence ’tis a perilous business to go a voyage in one of those ships, and many of them are lost, for in that Sea of India the storms are often terrible.[NOTE 3]

The people are black, and are worshippers of Mahommet.  The residents avoid living in the cities, for the heat in summer is so great that it would kill them.  Hence they go out (to sleep) at their gardens in the country, where there are streams and plenty of water.  For all that they would not escape but for one thing that I will mention.  The fact is, you see, that in summer a wind often blows across the sands which encompass the plain, so intolerably hot that it would kill everybody, were it not that when they perceive that wind coming they plunge into water up to the neck, and so abide until the wind have ceased.[NOTE 4] [And to prove the great heat of this wind, Messer Mark related a case that befell when he was there.