so that there are many rich merchants.  Every year there depart from hence fifty ships laden with cloths of cotton or silk, bound for the cities of Turkey, Syria, Arabia, Persia, Ethiopia, and India.  There are also many merchant strangers, who buy precious stones from the natives.  We found here many Christian merchants who were born, as they told us, in the city of Sarnau.  They had brought to this great mart wood of aloes and laser, which latter yields the sweet gum called laserpitium, commonly called belzoi, or benzoin, which is a kind of myrrh.  They bring also musk and several other sweet perfumes.  These Christian merchants told us, that in their country were many Christian princes, subject to the great khan, who dwells in the city of Cathay[89].  The dress of these Christians was of camblet, very loose and full of plaits, and lined with cotton; and they wore sharp pointed caps of a scarlet colour, two spans high.  They are white men, believing in one God with a trinity of persons, and were baptized after our manner.  They believe in the doctrines of the evangelists and apostles, and write from right to left like the Armenians.  They celebrate the birth and crucifixion of Christ, observe the forty days of lent, and keep the days of several saints.  They wear no shoes, but have a kind of hose of silk on their legs, garnished with jewels.  On their fingers they wore rings with stones of wonderful splendour.  At their meat they use no tables, but eat lying on the ground, feeding upon flesh of all kinds.  They affirmed also that there are certain Christian kings, whom they called Rumi, bordering on the Turks.  When these Christians had seen the precious merchandise belonging to my companion, and particularly a great branch of coral, they earnestly advised him to accompany them to a certain city, whither they were bound, assuring him that by their procurement he should sell this to very great advantage, especially if he would take rubies in payment, by means of which he might easily gain 10,000 pieces of gold, assuring him that these stones were of much greater value in Turkey than in the east.  And as they were ready to depart the very next day in a foist bound for the city of Pegu, where they meant to go, my companion consented to go with them, more especially as he expected to find there certain Persians his countrymen.  Wherefore departing with these men from Bengal, and sailing across a great gulf to the south-east, we came at length to the city of Pegu, which is 1000 miles from Bengal.

[Footnote 88:  Here, as usual, the name of the country is given instead of the chief city, and we have no means even to guess what place is indicated, unless perhaps the Satigan of other ancient relations, which appears to have been a city on the Hoogly river, or western branch of the Ganges.—­E.]

[Footnote 89:  The capital of Cathay or northern China is Cambalu or Pekin, but it is difficult to make any thing of these Christian natives of Sarnau, or of their many Christian princes in Tartary; unless we may suppose Verthema to have mistaken the followers of the Lama of Thibet for Christians, as appears to have been done by some of the more ancient travellers in our early volumes.—­E.]