At Neap Tides Is The Least Danger.
Thieves Also, When You Are Over The Channel, Are Not A Little Dangerous,
Forcing merchants, if not the better provided, to quit their goods, or
by long dispute betraying them to the fury
Of the tide, which comes
with such swiftness that it is ten to one if any escape. Cambay is
infested with an infinite number of monkies, which are continually
leaping from house to house, doing much mischief and untiling the
houses, so that people in the streets are in danger of being felled by
the falling stones.
Five coss from Cambay is Jumbosier, now much ruined, and thence
eighteen coss to Broach, a woody and dangerous journey, in which are
many peacocks. Within four coss of Broach is a great mine of agates.
Broach is a fair castle, seated on a river twice as broad as the Thames,
called the Nerbuddah, the mouth of which is twelve coss from thence.
Here are made rich baffatas, much surpassing Holland cloth in
fineness, which cost fifty rupees the book, each of fourteen English
yards, not three quarters broad. Hence to Variaw, twenty coss, is a
goodly country, fertile, and full of villages, abounding in wild date
trees, which are usually plentiful by the sea-side in most places, from
which they draw a liquor called Tarrie, Sure, or Toddic, as also
from a wild cocoa-tree called Tarrie. Hence to Surat is three coss,
being the close of the itinerary of Nicolas Ufflet.
The city of Agra has not been in repute above 50 years,[259] having only
been a village till the reign of Akbar, who removed his residence to
this place from Futtipoor, as already mentioned, for want of good water.
It is now a large city, and populous beyond measure, so that it is very
difficult to pass through the streets, which are mostly narrow and
dirty, save only the great Bazar and a few others, which are large and
handsome. The city is somewhat in the form of a crescent, on the
convexity of a bend of the Jumna, being about five coss in length on the
land side, and as much along the banks of the river, on which are many
goodly houses of the nobles, overlooking the Jumna, which runs with a
swift current from N.W. to S.E. to join the Ganges. On the banks of the
river stands the castle, one of the fairest and most admirable buildings
in all the East, some three or four miles in circuit, inclosed by a fine
and strong wall of squared stones, around which is a fair ditch with
draw-bridges. The walls are built with bulwarks or towers somewhat
defensible, having a counterscarp without, some fifteen yards broad.
Within are two other strong walls with gates.
[Footnote 259: This of course is to be understood as referring back from
1611, when Finch was there. We have here omitted a long uninteresting
and confused account of many parts of India, which could only have
swelled our pages, without conveying any useful information.
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