[Footnote 96:  Captain Saris told me that some have two; but these are of the baser sort and slaves, as he was told by one of these marked by this note of gentility.—­Purch.]

At Surat, although Sir Henry Middleton had taken their ships in the Red Sea, they promised to deal fairly with us, considering that otherwise they might burn their ships and give over all trade by sea, as Mill Jaffed, one of the chief merchants of Surat, acknowledged to us.  While at Surat, every one of us that remained any time ashore was afflicted with the flux, of which Mr Aldworth was ill for forty days.  The custom here is, that all strangers make presents on visiting any persons of condition, and they give other presents in return.

Finding it impossible to have any trade at Surat, as the Portuguese craft infested the mouth of the river, our general removed with the ships to Swally roads, whence we might go and come by land without danger, between that place and Surat.  Mr Canning had been made prisoner by the Portuguese, but the viceroy ordered him to be set ashore at Surat, saying, “Let him go and help his countrymen to fight, for we shall take their ships and all of them together.”  He was accordingly liberated, and came to us at Swally.  The purser had likewise been nearly taken; but he escaped and got on board.  The 3d October, Seikh Shuffe, governor of Amadavar, [Ahmedabad], the chief city of Guzerat, came to Surat and thence to Swally, where he entered into articles of agreement for trade and friendship.

The 29th of October, four Portuguese galleons and a whole fleet of frigates, or armed grabs, hove in sight.  Our general went immediately to meet them in the Dragon, and fired not one shot till he came between their admiral and vice-admiral, when he gave each of them a broadside and a volley of small arms, which made them come no nearer for that day.  The other two galleons were not as yet come up, and our consort the Hosiander could not get clear of her anchors, so that she did not fire a shot that day.  In the evening both sides came to anchor in the sight of each other.  Next morning the fight was renewed, and this day the Hosiander bravely redeemed her yesterday’s inactivity.  The Dragon drove three of them aground, and the Hosiander so danced the hay about them, that they durst never show a man above hatches.  They got afloat in the afternoon with the tide of flood, and renewed the fight till evening, and then anchored till next day.  Next day, as the Dragon drew much water, and the bay was shallow, we removed to the other side of the bay at Mendafrobay, [Jaffrabat], where Sardar Khan, a great nobleman of the Moguls, was then besieging a castle of the Rajaputs, who, before the Mogul conquest, were the nobles of that country, and were now subsisting by robbery.  He presented our general with a horse and furniture, which he afterwards gave to the governor of Gogo, a poor town to the west of Surat.