bows and arrows, and targets.  The royal ensign is an umbrella borne aloft on a spear, so as to shade the king from the heat of the sun, which ensign in their language is called somber.  When both armies approach within three arrow-flights, the king sends his bramins to the enemy by way of heralds, to challenge an hundred of them to combat against an hundred of his nairs, during which set combat both sides prepare themselves for battle.  In the mean time the two select parties proceed to combat, mid-way between the two armies, always striking with the edge of their swords at the heads of their antagonists, and never thrusting with the point, or striking at the legs.  Usually when five or six are slain of either side, the Bramins interpose to stop the fight, and a retreat is sounded at their instance.  After which the Bramins speak to the adverse kings, and generally succeed to make up matters without any battle or farther slaughter.

The king sometimes rides on an elephant, but at other times is carried by his nairs or nobles, and when he goes out is always followed by a numerous band of minstrels, making a prodigious noise with drums, timbrels, tambourets, and other such instruments.  The wages of the nairs are four carlines each, monthly, in time of peace, and six during war.  When any of them are slain, their bodies are burned with great pomp and many superstitious ceremonies, and their ashes are preserved; but the common people are buried in their houses, gardens, fields, or woods, without any ceremony.  When I was in Calicut it was crowded with merchants from almost every part of the east, especially a prodigious number of Mahometans.  There were many from Malacca and Bengal, from Tanaserim, Pegu, and Coromandel, from the islands of Ceylon and Sumatra, from all the cities and countries of Western India, and various Persians, Arabians, Syrians, Turks, and Ethiopians.  As the idolaters do not sail on the sea, the Mahometans are exclusively employed in navigation, so that there are not less than 15,000 Mahometans resident in Calicut, mostly born in that place.  Their ships are seldom below the burden of four or five hundred tons, yet all open and without decks.  They do not put any tow or oakum into the seams of their ships, yet join the planks so artificially, that they hold out water admirably, the seams being pitched and held together with iron nails, and the wood of which their ships are built is better than ours.  Their sails are made of cotton cloth, doubled in the under parts, by which they gather much wind and swell out like bags, having only one sail to each vessel.  Their anchors are of marble, eight spans long, having two on each side of the ship, which are hung by means of double ropes.  Their voyages are all made at certain appointed times and seasons, as one time of the year answers for one coast, and another season for other voyages, which must all be regulated according to the changes of the weather.  In the