This country has plenty of wood fit for the construction of ships.  Those which they build are of a strange fashion, named gunchos or junks, having three masts with two stems and two sterns, having gouvernals or rudders on both.  “When sailing on the ocean and having given their sails to the wind, if it be afterwards needful to have more sails, not changing the first they go backwards without turning the ship and using only one mast[97].”  The natives are most expert swimmers, and have a wonderful contrivance for producing fire in an instant.  Their houses are very low and built of stone, and instead of tiles or thatch they are covered by the hide of a fish called tartaruca! which is found in that part of the Indian sea, which is so huge a monster that one of their skins which I saw weighed 330 pounds.  There are likewise serpents in this country much larger than those at Calicut.

[Footnote 97:  This account of the mode of navigation is inexplicable, or at least obscure.  Perhaps it is meant to express that they do not tack, but sail with either end foremost as suits the change of wind or direction of the ship.—­E.]

At this place our Christian friends, meaning to prosecute their own affairs, proposed to take their leave of us, but my Persian companion spoke to them in this manner; “Though my friends I am not your countryman, yet being all brethren and the children of Adam, I take God to witness that I love you as if you were of my own blood, and children of the same parents, and considering how long we have kept company together in a loving manner, I cannot think of parting from you without much grief of mind:  Besides, even if you would leave me, I hope you will not desert this my companion who is of the same faith with yourselves.”  Then the Christians asked how I, being a Persian, happened to be of the Christian faith?  To which my companion answered that I was no Persian, but had been bought at Jerusalem.  On hearing the holy name of Jerusalem pronounced, the Christians lifted up their hands and eyes to heaven, and prostrating themselves thrice kissed the ground; then rising up, they asked what age I was of when brought from Jerusalem.  Being told that I was then fifteen years of age, they said I might well remember my country; to which my companion answered that I did so assuredly, and had often given him much pleasure by the things I had told him concerning it.  Then the merchants said that although they had long desired to return into their own country, which was far from thence, they would still bear us company to those places to which we proposed going.  Preparing ourselves therefore for a voyage, we took shipping and in fifteen days we came to the island of Bandan or Banda, whence nutmegs and mace are procured.