patch and sell this merchandise. These people live with justice, and good weight and measure, loving peace, and are people who love ease and pleasure.[1] They have wooden scales, after the fashion of those of north of the Loire,[2] for weighing their merchandise. Their houses are made of wood and beams and canes, founded on piles, and are very high, and must be entered by means of ladders; their rooms are like ours, and underneath they keep their cattle, such as pigs, goats, and fowls. The young people sound bag-pipes,[3] made like ours, and call them Subin.[4]
In this island of the king's there is a kind of animal carrying a shell called carniolle, fine to look at, which cause the whale to die. For the whale swallows them alive; then, when they are inside its body, they come out of their shell and go and eat the whale's heart: and the people of this country find this animal alive inside the whale. These animals, the carniolles, have the teeth and skin black, and their shell is white. Their flesh is good to eat, and they call them Laghan.[5]
The following Friday we showed them a shop full of our merchandise, which was of various strange sorts, at which they were surprised. For metal, iron, and other big goods they gave us gold, and for the other small and sundry goods they gave us rice, pigs, goats, and other provisions. They gave us ten weights of gold for fourteen pounds of iron: each weight is a ducat and a half. The captain-general would not allow a large quantity of gold to be taken, so that the sailors should not sell what belonged to them too
- ↑ "Gens de bon temps."
- ↑ "Pardeça;" that is to say, "Par de ça la Loire," or "Langue d'oil." Languedoc was called "Par de la." The Milan edition describes the scales as a wooden pole suspended in the middle, with a basin suspended by three cords at one end, and a cord at the other end with a weight equal to the basin to which weights are attached.
- ↑ "Sonnent de zampogne."
- ↑ Perhaps this should be Sulin. Vide Marsden, Malay Dictionary.
- ↑ Lagan, a large sea snail. Tagal Dictionary.
