[Sidenote:  How pepper groweth.] Heere groweth the pepper; and it springeth vp by a tree or a pole, and is like our iuy berry, but something longer like the wheat eare:  and at the first the bunches are greene, and as they waxe ripe they cut them off and dry them.  The leafe is much lesser then the iuy leafe and thinner.  All the inhabitants here haue very little homes couered with the leaues of the coco-trees.  The men be of a reasonable stature; the women little; all blacke, with a cloth bound about their middle hanging downe to their hammes; all the rest of their bodies be naked:  they haue horrible great eares with many rings set with pearles and stones in them.  The king goeth incached, as they do all; he doth not remaine in a place aboue fiue or sixe dayes:  he hath many houses, but they be but litle:  his guard is but small:  he remooueth from one house to another according to their order.  All the pepper of Calicut and course cinamom groweth here in this countrey.  The best cinamom doth come from Ceylon, and is pilled from fine yoong trees.  Here are very many palmer or coco trees, which is their chiefe food:  for it is their meat and drinke:  and yeeldeth many other necessary things, as I haue declared before.

[Sidenote:  Or Calicut or Cananor.] The Naires which be vnder the king of Samorin, which be Malabars, haue alwayes wars with the Portugals.  The king hath alwayes peace with them; but his people goe to the sea to robbe and steale.  Their chiefe captaine is called Cogi Alli; he hath three castles vnder him.  When the Portugals complaine to the king, he sayth he doth not send them out:  but he consenteth that they go.  They range all the coast from Ceylon to Goa, and go by foure or fiue parowes or boats together:  and haue in euery one of them fifty or threescore men, and boord presently.  They do much harme on that coast, and take euery yere many foists and boats of the Portugals.  Many of these people be Moores.  This kings countrey beginneth twelue leagues from Cochin, and reacheth neere vnto Goa.  I remained in Cochin vntill the second of Nouember, which was eight moneths; for that there was no passage that went away in all that time:  if I had come two dayes sooner I had found a passage presently.  From Cochin I went to Goa, where I remained three dayes.  From Cochin to Goa is an hundred leagues.  From Goa I went to Chaul, which is threescore leagues, where I remained three and twenty dayes:  and there making my prouision of things necessary for the shippe, from thence I departed to Ormus; where I stayed for a passage to Balsara fifty dayes.  From Goa to Ormus is foure hundred leagues.

Here I thought good, before I make an end of this my booke, to declare some things which India and the countrey farther Eastward do bring forth.

The pepper groweth in many parts of India, especially about Cochin:  and much of it doeth grow in the fields among the bushes without any labour:  and when it is ripe they go and gather it.  The shrubbe is like vnto our iuy tree:  and if it did not run about some tree or pole, it would fall down and rot.  When they first gather it, it is greene; and then they lay it in the Sun, and it becommeth blacke.