Page:First Voyage Round the World.djvu/197

 onions. There are also many animals, such as elephants, horses, buffaloes, pigs, goats, fowls, geese, crows, and others.

They say that the King of Burné has two pearls as large as a hen's eggs, and so perfectly round that if placed on a smooth table they cannot be made to stand still. When we took him the presents I made signs to him that I desired to see them, and he said that he would show them to me, but he did not do so. On the following day some of the chief men told me that they had indeed seen them.

The money which the Moors use in this country is of metal, and pierced for stringing together. On one side only it has four signs, which are four letters of the great King of China: they call it Picis. For one cathil (a weight equal to two of our pounds) of quicksilver they gave us six porcelain dishes, for a cathil of metal they gave one small porcelain vase, and a large vase for three knives. For a hand of paper they gave one hundred picis. A bahar of wax (which is two hundred and three cathils) for one hundred and sixty cathils of bronze: for eighty cathils a bahar of salt: for forty cathils a bahar of anime, a gum which they use to caulk ships, for in these countries they have no pitch. Twenty tabil make a cathil. The merchandise which is most esteemed here is bronze, quicksilver, cinnabar, glass, woollen stuffs, linens; but above all they esteem iron and spectacles.

Since I saw such use made of porcelain, I got some information respecting it, and I learned that it is made with a kind of very white earth, which is left underground for fully fifty years to refine it, so that they are in the habit of saying that the father buries it for his son. It is said that if poison is put into a vessel of fine porcelain it breaks immediately.

The junks mentioned several times above are their largest vessels, and they are constructed in this manner. The lower part of the ships and the sides to a height of two spans above