nd the fleet which commeth euery
yeere from Portugall, which are fiue or sixe great shippes that come
directly for Goa, arriue there ordinarily the sixth or tenth of September,
and there they remaine forty or fifty dayes, and from thence they goe to
Cochin, where they lade for Portugall, and often times they lade one shippe
at Goa and the other at Cochin for Portugall. Cochin is distant from Goa
three hundred miles. The city of Goa is situate in the kingdome of Dialcan
a king of the Moores, whose chiefe city is vp in the countrey eight dayes
iourney, and is called Bisapor: the king is of great power, for when I was
in Goa in the yeere of our Lord 1570, this king came to giue assault to
Goa, being encamped neere vnto it by a riuer side with an army of two
hundred thousand men of warre, and he lay at this siege foureteene moneths
in which time there was peace concluded, and as report went amongst his
people, there was great calamity and mortality which bred amongst them in
the time of Winter, and also killed very many elephants. [Sidenote: A very
good sale for horses.] Then in the yeere of our Lord 1567, I went from Goa
to Bezeneger the chiefe city of the king dome of Narsinga eight dayes
iourney from Goa, within the land, in the company of two other merchants
which carried with them three hundred Arabian horses to that king: because
the horses of that countrey are of a small stature, and they pay well for
the Arabian horses: and is requisite that the merchants sell them well, for
that they stand them in great charges to bring them out of Persia to Ormus,
and from Ormus to Goa, where the ship that bringeth twenty horses and
vpwards payeth no custome, neither ship nor goods whatsoeuer; whereas if
they bring no horses, they pay 8 per cento of all their goods: and at the
going out of Goa the horses pay custome, two and forty pagodies for euery
horse, which pagody may be of sterling money sixe shillings eight pence,
they be pieces of golde of that value. So that the Arabian horses are of
great value in those countreys, as 300, 400, 500 duckets a horse, and to
1000 duckets a horse.

Bezeneger.

The city of Bezeneger was sacked in the yeere 1565, by foure kings of the
Moores, which were of great power and might: the names of these foure kings
were these following, the first was called Dialcan, the second Zamaluc, the
third Cotamaluc, and the fourth Viridy: and yet these foure kings were not
able to ouercome the city and the k