The country about Mozambique is full of orchards and fruit trees, especially citrons, lemons, and oranges, and has all kinds of wild and tame beasts like those in Europe, together with prodigious numbers of elephants.  The principal food of the people is maize.  The woods mostly consist of ebony, being a very lofty tree with leaves like those of our apple trees, and fruit resembling medlars, but not eatable, the whole stem and branches being thickly covered with thorns.  The bark is as susceptible of fire as tinder, and when one of these trees is cut down it never springs up again.  There is another sort of a yellowish colour, which is reckoned valuable.  The best manna is produced in this country.  Among the fish of this river is one equally voracious with the crocodile, from which no man escapes that gets within their reach, but they never injure women.  One of these of a prodigious size was caught having gold rings in its ears, which was supposed to have been done as some species of witchcraft or incantation by the Kafrs to clear the river from these dangerous animals.  In confirmation of this opinion, we read in an Arabian author named Matude, giving an account of prodigies, that about the year 863 a brazen crocodile was found under the ruins of an Egyptian temple, on which certain characters or symbolical letters were impressed, and when this image was broken in pieces the crocodiles of the Nile began again to devour men.

During the viceroyalty of Don Duarte de Menezes fresh troubles broke out in the kingdom of Visiapour, in consequence of which the Moguls invaded the country, and after laying it waste to a great extent possessed themselves of many of its towns cities and districts.  The occasions of these troubles was this:  The king being ill of a contagious distemper, his two favourite ministers, Acede Khan and Calabate Khan, kept him concealed in the palace, so that no person was allowed to see him.  The prince and the people had recourse to arms, in order to force these tyrants to admit them into the kings presence; on which they persuaded the infirm king that the prince wished to depose him, so that the king went to war against the prince, and defeated him with great slaughter, upon which the Moguls were called in to their assistance, and used the opportunity to plunder the country and appropriate it to themselves.

Towards the close of the viceroyalty of Don Duarte de Menezes, Raju who had usurped the sovereignty of Ceylon, determined upon making a conquest of the Portuguese fortress of Columbo, with a view of expelling them from that island.  For this purpose he collected an immense army, in which were 50,000 soldiers, 60,000 pioneers, and nearly as many artificers of various descriptions, with 2200 elephants, 40,000 oxen, 150 pieces of cannon, and 50,000 intrenching tools, axes, shovels, spades, and mattocks, with an innumerable quantity of spare arms and ammunition; among which were two wooden castles built upon enormous carriages,