When any merchant of these idolaters is sore afflicted with disease and near death, then certain persons who are accounted physicians among them ore called to visit the person in extremity.  These persons accordingly come to his house in the dead of night, dressed like devils, and carrying burning sticks in their mouth and hands.  And there, with mad cries and boilings, and with the jangling of certain instruments, they make such a horrible noise in the ears of the sick man, as is enough to make a healthy man sick.  This is the only remedy these pretended physicians offer to their sick persons, being merely to present to him when at the point of death the resemblance of him whom, worse than devils, they honour as the vicegerent of the deity.  When any one hath so engorged himself with eating as to be sick at stomach, he takes the powder of ginger, mixed in some liquid to the consistence of syrup, which he drinks, and in three days he recovers his former health.

Their bankers, brokers, and money-changers use weights and scales of such small size, that the box containing the whole does not exceed an ounce in weight, yet are they so delicate and just that they will turn with the weight of a hair.  For trying the parity of gold, they use the touch-stone as with us, but with this addition:  having first rubbed the gold to be tried on the touch-stone, they rub over the mark with a ball of some sort of composition resembling wax, by which all that is not fine gold disappears, and the marks or spots of gold remain, by which they have an exact proof of the fineness of the gold.  When the ball becomes full of gold, they melt it in the fire, to recover the gold which it contains; yet are these men very ignorant even of the art which they profess.  In buying or selling merchandise they employ the agency of brokers; so that the buyer and seller each employs a separate broker.  The seller takes the buyer by the hand, under cover of a scarf or veil, where, by means of the fingers, counting from one to a hundred thousand privately, they offer and bargain far the price till they are agreed, all of which passes in profound silence.

The women of this country suckle their children till three months old, after which they feed them on goats milk.  When in the morning they have given them milk, they allow them to tumble about on the sands all foul and dirty, leaving them all day in the sun, so that they look more like buffaloe calves than human infants; indeed I never saw such filthy creatures.  In the evening they get milk again.  Yet by this manner of bringing up they acquire marvellous dexterity in running, leaping, swimming, and the like.