anker did not holde her prowe vp by strength, shee
would be ouerthrowen and lost with men and goods. [Sidenote: These tides
make their iust coarse as ours doe.] When the water beginneth to increase,
it maketh such a noyse and so great that you would think it an earthquake,
and presently at the first it maketh three waues. So that the first washeth
ouer the barke, from stemme to sterne, the second is not so furious as the
first, and the thirde rayseth the Anker, and then for the space of sixe
houres while the water encreaseth, they rowe with such swiftnesse that you
would thinke they did fly: in these tydes there must be lost no iot of
time, for if you arriue not at the stagions before the tyde be spent, you
must turne back from whence you came. For there is no staying at any place,
but at these stagions, and there is more daunger at one of these places
then at another, as they be higher and lower one then another. When as you
returne from Pegu to Martauan, they goe but halfe the tide at a time,
because they will lay their barkes vp aloft on the bankes, for the reason
aforesayd. I could neuer gather any reason of the noyse that this water
maketh in the increase of the tide, and in deminishing of the water. There
is another Macareo in Cambaya, [Sidenote: The Macareo is a tide or a
currant.] but that is nothing in comparison of this. By the helpe of God we
came safe to Pegu, which are two cities, the olde and the newe, in the olde
citie are the Marchant strangers, and marchants of the Countrey, for there
are the greatest doings and the greatest trade. This citie is not very
great, but it hath very great suburbes. Their houses be made with canes,
and couered with leaues, or with strawe, but the marehants haue all one
house or Magason, which house they call Godon which is made of brickes, and
there they put all their goods of any valure, to saue them from the often
mischances that there happen to houses made of such stuffe. In the newe
citie is the pallace of the king, and his abiding place with all his barons
and nobles, and other gentlemen; and in the time that I was there, they
finished the building of the new citie: it is a great citie, very plaine
and flat, and foure square, walled round about and with ditches that
compasse the wals about with water, in which ditches are many crocodils, it
hath no drawe bridges, yet it hath twentie gates, fiue for euery square on
the walles, there are many places made for centinels to watc