Quiacim shire, as farre as I can perceiue, lieth vpon the South.  On that side we kept at our first entry thereinto, trauayling not farre from the high mountaines we saw there.  Asking what people dwelleth beyond those monntaines, it was told me that they be theeues and men of a strange language.  And because that vnto sundry places neere this riuer the mountaines doe approch, whence the people issuing downe do many times great harme, this order is taken at the entry into Quiacim shire.  To guard this riuer whereon continually go to and fro Parai great and small fraught with salt, fish poudred with peper, and other necessaries for that countrey, they do lay in diuers places certaine Parai, and great barges armed, wherin watch and ward is kept day and night on both sides of the riuer, for the safety of the passage, and securitie of such Parai as do remaine there, though the trauailers neuer go but many in company.  In euery rode there be at the least thirtie, in some two hundred men, as the passage requireth.  This guard is kept vsually vntill you come to the City Onchio, where continually the Tutan of this shire, and eke of Cantan, maketh his abode.  From that City vpward, where the riuer waxeth more narrow, and the passage more dangerous, there be alwayes armed one hundred and fiftie Parai, to accompany other vessels fraught with marchandize, and all this at the Kings charges.  This seemed to me one of the strangest things I did see in this Countrey.

When we lay at Fuquien, we did see certaine Moores, who knew so litle of their secte, that they could say nothing else but that Mahomet was a Moore, my father was a Moore, and I am a Moore, with some other wordes of their Alcoran, wherewithall, in abstinence from swines flesh, they liue vntill the diuel take them all.  This when I saw, and being sure that in many Chinish Cities the reliques of Mahomet are kept, as soone as we came to the City where these fellowes be, I enfourmed my selfe of them, and learned the trueth.

[Sidenote:  Great ships comming from the North.] These Moores, as they tolde me, in times past came in great ships fraught with marchandise from Pachin ward, to a port granted vnto them by the king, as hee is wont to all them that traffique into this Countrey, where they being arriued at a litle Towne standing in the hauens mouth, in time conuerted vnto their sect the greatest Loutea there.  When that Loutea with all his family was become Moorish, the rest began likewise to doe the same.  In this part of China the people be at libertie, euery one to worship and folow what him liketh best.  Wherefore no body tooke heede thereto, vntil such time as the Moores perceiuing that many followed them in superstition, and that the Loutea fauoured them, they began to forbid wholy the eating of swines flesh.  But all these countreymen and women chosing rather to forsake father and mother, then to leaue off eating of porke, by no meanes would yeeld to that proclamation.  For