chap, xx BARKER
241
religion
which he had embraced, was obliged to demolish the mosque and build a
new one ; the Prince, his brother, withdrew with some other idolatrous
nobles, and has never again appeared at Court since that time.
This
is all that I have been able to collect of the most singular facts
regarding the Kingdoms of the East included in the territories of the
Great Mogul and the Empire of China, of which I also have good memoirs
; but as I know that several persons have written fully regarding them,
I think the reader would prefer that I should give him the result of my
own travels and that I should amuse him only with accounts of what I
have witnessed with my own eyes.
CHAPTER XX
The
Author pursues his journey in the East and embarks at Vengurla for
Batavia ; the danger which he runs on the sea, and his arrival in the
Island of Ceylon.
I left Vengurla,
a large town of the Kingdom of Bijapur, 8 leagues from Goa, on the 14th
of April 1648, and embarked on a Dutch vessel which had just brought
silks from Persia and was going to Batavia. It had orders to stop at
Bakanor * en route, in order to take in rice, and we arrived
there on the 18th of the same month. I landed with the captain, who
went to see the King to ask his permission to take the rice ; this he
gave willingly. It was necessary for us to ascend by the river nearly 3
leagues, and we found the King close to the water, where there were
only ten or twelve huts made of palm leaves. He sat in his own hut on a
Persian carpet spread beneath him, and there were Ave or six women,
some of whom fanned him with fans made of peacocks' tails, while the
others gave him betel and filled his pipe with tobacco. The most
important persons of the country were in the other huts, and we counted
about 200 men, the majority armed
1 Barkur, an old port on an estuary on the west coast of India, Lat. 13° 28J'. According to the Imperial Gazetteer (vii.
22) it was 'the capital of the Jain Kings of Tulava . . . and
subsequently a stronghold of the Vijayanagar Rajas. It is often
mentioned by the older travellers ' (see Yule, Hobson-Jobson, 45).
