[Sidenote: Bondmen and bondwomen.] They haue many bond seruants both men
and women. Bondmen and bondwomen, is one of the best kind of merchandise
that any man may bring. When they buy any maydes or yong women, they yse to
fede them in all partes, as with vs men doe horses: when one hath bought a
yong woman, if he like her, be will keepe her for his owne vse as long as
him listeth, and then selleth her to an other, who doth the like with her.
So that one woman is sometimes sold in the space of foure or fiue yeeres,
twelue, or twentie times. If a man keepe a bondwoman for his owne vse, and
if hee find her to be false to him, and giue her body to any other, he may
kill her if he will.
[Sidenote: Women bought and sold, and let to hire.] When a merchant or
traueller commeth to any towne where he entendeth to tary any time, he
hireth a woman, or sometimes 2. or 3. during his abode there. And when he
commeth to an other towne, he doeth the like in the same also: for there
they vse to put out their women to hire, as wee do here hackney horses.
[Sidenote: Abundance of oile issuing out of the ground.] There is a very
great riuer which runneth through the plaine of Iauat, which falleth into
the Caspian sea, by a towne called Bachu, neere vnto which towne is a
strange thing to behold.
