The island of Sumatra is pleasant and fertile, abounding in many excellent fruits; but their only grain is rice, which serves them for bread.  They plough the land with buffaloes, which they have in great numbers, but with small skill, and less industry.  The rice grows in all respects like our barley.  They have plenty of pepper, which is grown in large gardens or plantations, often a mile square.  It grows like hops, from a planted root, winding about a stake set to support it, till it grows like a great bushy tree, whence the pepper hangs in small clusters, three inches long, and an inch about, each cluster having forty pepper-corns; and it yields as great increase as mustard-seed.  At Acheen they are able to load twenty ships every year, and might supply more, if the people were industrious.  The whole country resembles a pleasure-garden, the air being temperate and wholesome, having every morning a fruitful dew, or small rain.  The harbour of Acheen is very small, having only six feet water on the bar, at which there is a stone fort, the ramparts of which are covered or flanked with battlements, all very low, and very despicable.  In front of this fort is an excellent road, or anchoring ground for ships, the wind being, always off shore, so that a ship may ride safely a mile from the shore, in eighteen fathoms, and close in, in six and four fathoms.

In this country there are elephants, horses, buffaloes, oxen, and goats, with many wild-hogs.  The land has plenty of mines of gold and copper, with various gums, balsams, many drugs, and much indigo.  Its precious stones are rubies, sapphires, and garnets; but I know not whether they are found there, or are brought from other places.  It has likewise most excellent timber for building ships.  The city of Acheen,[39] if such it may be called, is very spacious, and is built in a wood, so that the houses are not to be seen till we are close upon them; neither could we go into any place but we found houses and a great concourse of people, so that the town seems to spread over the whole land.  Their houses are raised on posts, eight feet or better from the ground, leaving free passage under them, the walls and roofs being only of mats, the poorest and weakest things that can be conceived.  I saw three great market-places, which were every day crowded like fairs, with all kinds of commodities exposed for sale.

[Footnote 39:  This place, called likewise Achin and Achien by Davis, is commonly called Achen; but in the letters from the king to Queen Elizabeth, which will be mentioned in the sequel it is called Ashi.—­Astl.  I. 259. b.]