. 



marchand'ises 

 of Pegu. 



A.D. THE ENGLISH VOYAGES 



1583-91. 



your debt good, because you sell your marchandises upon 

 their word. If the Broker pay you not at his day, you 

 may take him home, and keepe him in your house : 

 which is a great shame for him. And if he pay you not 

 presently, you may take his wife and children and his 

 slaves, and binde them at your doore, and set them in 

 the Sunne ; for that is the law of the countrey. Their 

 The money of current money in these parts is a kinde of brasse which 

 Pegu- they call Gansa, wherewith you may buy golde, silver, 



rubies, muske, and all other things. The golde and 

 silver is marchandise, and is worth sometimes more, and 

 sometimes lesse, as other wares be. This brasen money 

 doeth goe by a weight which they call a biza ; and com- 

 monly this biza after our account is worth about halfe a 

 The severdl crowne or somewhat lesse. The marchandise which be 

 in Pegu, are golde, silver, rubies, saphires, spinelles, 

 muske, benjamin or frankincense, long pepper, tinne, 

 leade, copper, lacca whereof they make hard waxe, rice, 

 and wine made of rice, and some sugar. The elephants 

 doe eate the sugar canes, or els they would make very 

 much. And they consume many canes likewise in 

 making of their Varellaes or Idole temples, which are 

 The forme of in great number both great and small. They be made 

 their Temples round like a sugar loafe, some are as high as a Church, 

 or Varellaes. ^^^^ broad beneath, some a quarter of a mile in com- 

 passe : within they be all earth done about with stone. 

 They consume in these Varellaes great quantity of golde ; 

 for that they be all gilded aloft : and many of them from 

 the top to the bottome : and every ten or twelve yeeres 

 [II. i. 261.] they must be new gilded, because the raine consumeth off 

 the golde : for they stand open abroad. If they did not 

 consume their golde in these vanities, it would be very 

 plentifull and good cheape in Pegu. About two dayes 

 journey from Pegu there is a Varelle or Pagode, which 

 is the pilgrimage of the Pegues : it is called Dogonne, 

 . and is of a woonderfull bignesse, and all gilded from 

 orPriesTof ^^^ ^°°^ ^^ ^^^ toppe. And there is an house by 

 Pegu. it wherein the Tallipoies which are their Priests doe 



492 



