ships 

 om 



REPORTS OF CHINA a.d. 



c. 1565. 



where the river waxeth more narrow, and the passage 



more dangerous, there be alwayes armed one hundred 



and fiftie Parai, to accompany other vessels fraught 



with marchandize, and all this at the Kings charges. 



This seemed to me one of the strangest things I did 



see in this Countrey. 



When we lay at Fuquien, we did see certaine Moores, 

 who knew so litle of their secte, that they could say 

 nothing else but that Mahomet was a Moore, my father 

 was a Moore, and I am a Moore, with some other 

 wordes of their Alcoran, wherewithall, in abstinence from 

 swines flesh, they live untill the divel take them all. 

 This when I saw, & being sure that in many Chinish [II. ii. 78,] 

 Cities the reliques of Mahomet are kept, as soone as 

 we came to the City where these fellowes be, I enfourmed 

 my selfe of them, and learned the trueth. 



These Moores, as they tolde me, in times past came G 

 in great ships fraught with marchandise from Pachin commingfi 

 ward, to a port granted unto them by the king, as the North. 

 hee is wont to all them that traffique into this Countrey, 

 where they being arrived at a litle Towne standing in 

 the havens mouth, in time converted unto their sect 

 the greatest Loutea there. When that Loutea with all 

 his family was become Moorish, the rest began likewise 

 to doe the same. In this part of China the people be 

 at libertie, every one to worship and folow what him 

 liketh best. Wherefore no body tooke heede thereto, 

 untill such time as the Moores perceiving that many 

 followed them in superstition, and that the Loutea 

 favoured them, they began to forbid wholy the eating 

 of swines flesh. But all these countreymen and women 

 chosing rather to forsake father and mother, then to leave 

 off eating of porke, by no meanes would yeeld to that 

 proclamation. For besides the great desire they all have 

 to eate that kinde of meate, many of them do live 

 thereby : and therefore the people complained unto the 

 Magistrates, accusing the Moores of a conspiracie pre- 

 tended betwixt them and the Loutea against their king, 

 vi 321 x 



