A new account of East-India and Persia, in eight letters being nine years travels begun 1672 and finished 1681 : containing observations made of the moral, natural and artifical estate of those countries ... / by John Fryer ... ; illustrated with maps, figures and useful tables.

Maderas

THEN divides it self into divers Long Streets,* 1.1 and they are checquered by as many transverse. It enjoys some Choultries for Places of Justice;* 1.2 one Exchange, one Pagod, contained in a square Stone-wall; wherein are a number of Chappels (if they may be comprehended under that Classis most of them resembling ra∣ther Monuments for the Dead, than Places of Devotion for the Li∣ving) one for every Tribe; not under one Roof, but distinctly se∣parate, though altogether, they bear the name of one intire Pagoda. The Work is inimitably durable, the biggest closed up with Arches continually shut, as where is supposed to be hid their Mammon of Unrighteousness, (they burying their Estates here when they dye, by the persuasion of their Priests, towards their viaticum for another State) admitting neither Light nor Air, more than what the Lamps, always burning, are by open Funnels above suffered to ventilate: By which Custom they seem to keep alive that Opinion of Plato, in such a Revolution to return into the World again, after their Trans∣migration, according to the Merits of their former living. Those of a minuter dimension were open, supported by slender straight and round Pillars, plain and uniform up to the top, where some Hiero∣glyphical Portraicture lends its assistance to the Roof, flat, with Stones laid along like Planks upon our Rafters. On the Walls of good Sculpture were obscene Images, where Aretine might have furnished his Fancy for his Bawdy Postures: The Floor is stoned, they are of no great altitude; stinking most egregiously of the Oyl they waste in their Lamps, and besmear their Beastly Gods with: Their outsides shew Workmanship and Cost enough, wrought round with monstrous Effigies; so that oleum & operam perdere, Pains and Cost to no purpose, may not improperly be applied to them. Their Gates are commonly the highest of the Work, the others concluding in shorter Piles.

Near the outside of the Town the English Golgotha,* 1.3 or Place of Sculls, presents variety of Tombs, Walks and Sepulchres; which latter, as they stand in a Line, are an open Cloyster; but succinctly and precisely a Quadragone with Hemispherical Aparti∣tions; on each side adorned with Battlements to the abutment of every Angle, who bear up a Coronal Arch, on whose Vertex a Globe is rivited by an Iron Wedge sprouting into a Branch; paved under∣neath with a great Black Stone, whereon is engraved the Name of the Party interred. The Buildings of less note are Low and Decent; the Town is walled with Mud, and Bulwarks for Watch-places for the English Peons; only on that side the Sea washes it, and the Fort meets it. On the North are two great Gates of Brick, and one on the West, where they wade over the River to the Washermens Town.

Its Map renders it a Trapezium by an Oblique Stroke of the River on that Corner, and another next the Sea, thus.

[illustration]

The Figure of Maderas.* 1.4

Without the Town grows their Rice, which is nourished by the letting in of the Water to drown it:* 1.5 Round about it is bestrewed with Gardens of the English; where, besides Gourds of all sorts for Stews and Pottage, Herbs for Sallad, and some few Flowers, as Jas∣samin, for beauty and delight; flourish pleasant Tops of Plantains, Cocoes, Guiavas, a kind of Pear, Jawks, a Coat of Armour over it like an Hedg-hog's, guards its weighty Fruit, Oval without for the length of a Span, within in fashion like Squils parted, Mangos, the delight of India, a Plum, Pomegranets, Bonanoes, which are a sort of Plantain, though less, yet much more grateful, Beetle; which last must not be slipt by in silence: It rises out of the Ground to twelve or fourteen Feet heighth, the Body of it green and slender, jointed like a Cane, the Boughs flaggy and spreading, under whose Arms it brings forth from its pregnant Womb (which bursts when her Month is come) a Cluster of Green Nuts, like Wallnuts in Green Shells, but different in the Fruit; which is hard when dried, and looks like a Nutmeg.

The Natives chew it with Chinam (Lime of calcined Oyster-Shells) and Arach,* 1.6 a Convolvulus with a Leaf like the largest Ivy, for to preserve their Teeth, and correct an unsavoury Breath: If swallowed, it inebriates as much as Tobacco. Thus mixed, it is the only Indian Entertainment, called Pawn.

These Plants set in a Row, make a Grove that might delude the Fanatick Multitude into an Opinion of their being sacred; and were not the Mouth of that Grand Impostor Hermetically sealed up, where Christianity is spread, these would still continue, as it is my Fancy they were of old, and may still be the Laboratories of his Fal∣lacious Oracles: For they masquing the face of Day, beget a so∣lemn reverence, and melancholy habit in them that resort to them; by representing the more inticing Place of Zeal, a Cathedral, with all its Pillars and Pillasters, Walks and Choirs; and so contrived, that whatever way you turn, you have an even Prospect.

But not to run too far out of Maderas before I give you an Ac∣count of the People;* 1.7 know they are of the same Nation with Metch∣lapatan, have the same unbelieving Faith, and under the same Bon∣dage with the Moors, were not that alleviated by the Power of the English, who command as far as their Guns reach: To them there∣fore they pay Toll, even of Cow-dung (which is their chiefest Fire∣ing) a Prerogative the Dutch could never obtain in this Kingdom, and by this means acquire great Estates without fear of being mo∣lested. Their only Merchants being Gentues, forty Moors having

〈1 page duplicate〉〈1 page duplicate〉

[illustration]

a. The Areca or Betele nul. b, the first sproul∣ing of it. c, the same grown bigger forming at length the tree, dd, whose under branches fallen leave the joynts bare, whilst young ones still s••••rout at the ••op e e; each branch hath a sheath, f. incompassing a joynl of y^e brunk. g. is a purse or husk containing the branches os flowers, which fallen leave young nutts, h h, w.^•h increase as, i i, and ripen to y•• form of k, whose tomen∣tose husk taken off▪ leaves the Areca nut, a, covered with a thin▪ shell. l l, shews the nut cut asunder.

m m, the Bamboos as groiving together n n, part of one drown larger. o o, One joynt yet much larger to shew the leaf p, and how the branches grow out of y^e joynt.

q q, a branch of the Mango tree. shewing the leaf r r. the flower s s. the fruit t t, and the inside of it, u u, when slit.

z▪ the marking nutt yielding,^• black oyle.

hardly Cohabitation with them, though of the Natives 30000 are employed in this their Monopoly.

The Country is Sandy,* 1.8 yet plentiful in Provisions; in all Places Tops of Trees, among one of which, on the top of a wi∣thered Stump sate perching a Chamelion,* 1.9 Graece 〈 in non-Latin alphabet 〉〈 in non-Latin alphabet 〉, clasping with its Claws its rotten Station, filling himself with his Aerial Food, ex tali satietate facile est parare famem; a Banquet which most other Creatures else arise an hungred from: But to be confirmed in the truth of what we have only by Tradition, I caused a Black who had a Bow there, to fell him with an Earthen Pellet, which when he had, after a small time he revived, and making a Collar of Straw for his Neck, he carried him to my Lodgings, where I dieted him a Month on the same Provant. That he changes his Colours at a con∣stant time of the Day, is not to be contradicted; but whether he live by the Air alone, I will not stand to it, unless there were a Dearth of Flies in the Countrey; though for my part I never did see him eat any. In Shape he comes nearest a Newt; with his Lungs his Body does agitate its self up to its Neck; he crawls on all Four, and has a Tail longer than his Body, which all together was no more than half a Foot; he has Teeth, and those sharp, which makes me think him an Ant•• beel-ubian.

Nine Days spent here,* 1.10 our Ships set sail again for Mechlapatan, leaving us behind them.

In this Interim we have leisure to say something, if not a plenary Panegyrick,

Notes

• * 1.1

  City of Made∣ras.
• * 1.2

  Visited a Pa∣god, or Hea∣then Temple.
• * 1.3

  The English Tombs.
• * 1.4

  The Figure of Maderas.
• * 1.5

  The English Gardens.
• * 1.6

  What Pawn is.
• * 1.7

  Nature of the People and
• * 1.8

  The Country.
• * 1.9

  A Chamelion.
• * 1.10

  Our Ships re∣turn to Mech∣lapatan.