When Prayer Was Over, There Was Great Festivity And Joy In The Ships, Which Came That Same Evening To Anchor Two Leagues From Calicut.

Immediately upon anchoring, some of the natives came off to the ships in four boats, called _almadias_, inquiring whence our ships came, as they had never before seen any resembling their construction upon that coast.

These natives were of a brown colour, and entirely naked, excepting very small aprons. Some of them immediately came on board the general, and the Guzerat pilot informed him these were poor fishermen; yet the general received them courteously, and ordered his people to purchase the fish which they had brought for sale. On conversing with them, he understood that the town whence they came, which was in sight, was not Calicut, which lay farther off, and to which they offered to conduct our fleet. Whereupon the general requested them to do this; and, departing from this first anchorage, the fleet was conducted by these fishermen to Calicut.

Calicut is a city on the coast of Malabar, a province of the second India, which begins at the mount of Delhi, and ends at Cape Comory, being sixty- one leagues in length, and fifteen leagues broad[48]. The whole of this country is very low, and apt to be covered with water, having many islands in its rivers, which flow into the Indian Sea. This country of Malabar is divided from the kingdom of Narsinga by a very high hill. The Indians report that this land of Malabar was covered by the sea of old, which then reached to the foot of the hills, and thence to a hill, where now the islands of the Maldives are found, which were then firm land; and that in after times it destroyed that latter country, and laid bare the country of Malabar, in which are many pleasant and rich cities, dependent upon trade, which they carry on principally with Calicut, which exceeds all cities of our days in riches and in vice.

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