with a similar guard.  Through this you enter into a very fair court, at the end of which is another porch like the first, with a similar guard, and within that another court.  Thus the first five gates are each guarded by their respective captains.  Then each of the lesser gates within are kept by a separate guard of porters.  These gates stand open the greatest part of the night, as it is the custom of the Gentiles to transact business and make their feasts during the night, rather than in the day.  This city is very safe from thieves, insomuch that the Portuguese merchants sleep under porches open to the street, and yet never meet with any injury.

At the end of two months, I determined to go for Goa, in company with two Portuguese merchants, who were making ready to depart in two palankins or small litters, which are very convenient vehicles for travelling, being carried by eight falchines, or bearers, four at a time, and other four as reliefs.  For my own use I bought two bullocks, one to ride upon and the other to carry my provisions.  In that country they ride upon bullocks, having pannels fastened with girths, and guide them with bridles.  In summer, the journey from Bijanagur to Goa takes only eight days; but we went in July, which is the middle of winter in that country, and were fifteen days in going to Ancola, on the sea coast.  On the eighth day of the journey I lost both my bullocks.  That which carried my provisions was weak, and could not proceed; and on passing a river by means of a small foot bridge, I made my other bullock swim across, but he stopt on a small island in the middle of the river where he found pasture, and we could devise no means to get him out.  I was under the necessity therefore to leave him, and was forced to go on foot for seven days, during which it rained almost incessantly, and I suffered great fatigue.  By good fortune I met some falchines[137] by the way, whom I hired to carry my clothes and provisions.  In this journey we suffered great troubles, being every day made prisoners, and had every morning at our departure to pay four or five pagies? a man as ransom.  Likewise, as we came almost every day into the country of a new governor, though all tributary to the king of Bijanagur, we found that every one of them had their own copper coin, so that the money we got in change one day was not current on the next.  At length, by the mercy of God, we got safe to Ancola, which is in the country of the queen of Gargopam[138], a tributary to the king of Bijanagur.

[Footnote 137:  These falchines of Cesar Frederick are now denominated coolies.—­E.]

[Footnote 138:  These names of Ancola and Gargopam are so unintelligibly corrupted, as not be even conjecturally referable to any places or districts in our best maps.—­E.]