foot vpon his knee with his sword in his hand:  it is not their order for the king to sit but to stand.  His apparell is a fine painted cloth made of cotton wooll about his middle:  his haire is long and bound vp with a little fine cloth about his head:  all the rest of his body is naked.  His guard are a thousand men, which stand round about him, and he in the middle; and when he marcheth, many of them goe before him, and the rest come after him.  They are of the race of the Chingalayes, which they say are the best kinde of all the Malabars.  Their eares are very large; for the greater they are, the more honourable they are accounted.  Some of them are a spanne long.  The wood which they burne is Cinamom wood, and it smelleth very sweet.  There is great store of rubies, saphires, and spinelles in this Iland:  the best kinde of all be here; but the king will not suffer the inhabitants to digge for them, lest his enemies should know of them, and make warres against him, and so driue him out of his countrey for them.  They haue no horses in all the countrey.  The elephants be not so great as those of Pegu, which be monstrous huge:  but they say all other elephants do feare them, and none dare fight with them, though they be very small.  Their women haue a cloth bound about them from their middle to their knee:  and all the rest is bare.  All of them be blacke and but little, both men and women.  Their houses are very little, made of the branches of the palmer or coco-tree, and couered with the leaues of the same tree.

The eleuenth of March we sailed from Ceylon, and so doubled the cape of Comori.  Not far from thence, betweene Ceylon and the maine land of Negapatan, they fish for pearles.  And there is fished euery yere very much; which doth serue all India, Cambaia, and Bengala, it is not so orient as the pearle of Baharim in the gulfe of Persia.  From cape de Comori we passed by Coulam, which is a fort of the Portugals:  from whence commeth great store of pepper, which commeth for Portugall:  for oftentimes there ladeth one of the caracks of Portugall.  Thus passing the coast we arriued in Cochin the 22 of March, where we found the weather warme, but scarsity of victuals:  for here groweth neither corne nor rice:  and the greatest part commeth from Bengala.  They haue here very bad water, for the riuer is farre off. [Sidenote:  People with swollen legges mentioned also by Ioh.  Huygen.] This bad water causeth many of the people to be like lepers, and many of them haue their legs swollen as bigge as a man in the waste, and many of them are scant able to go.  These people here be Malabars, and of the race of the Naires of Calicut:  and they differ much from the other Malabars.  These haue their heads very full of haire, and bound vp with a string:  and there doth appeare a bush without the band wherewith it is bound.  The men be tall and strong, and good archers with a long bow and a long arrow, which is their best weapon:  yet there be some caliuers among them, but they handle them badly.