247 JOURNAL, BOMBAY NATURAL HISTORY SOCIETY, Vol. VIII. 
degenerate countrymen of Henry the Navigator. But he has already 
taken us too far out of our own province. 
On board The Whale, however, he saw one thing there and here 
appropriate—a bit of a narwhal’s tusk—which the wandering Wood- 
vock had dug up in Greenland ; and we learn, casually, that Wood- 
cock’s employers stood out for over £2,000 sterling for the whole tusk ; 
but were disappointed, and only got, in the end, about £1,200— 
a good price, one would say now, for 100 such tusks. 
On the 24th of January “ began to be seen in the sea abundance of 
things which I (Della Valle) took to be snakes,” and which probably 
were sea-snakes, although his shipmates and his Hditor would not 
have it. 
On the 4th February they sighted land “which the English call 
Terra di San Giovanni,’’ that is, they called it then, as now, the High- 
land of St. John. The Editor calls it a promontory, but it is a 
mountain six miles inland. The forest on the top is still very jealously 
preserved, lest the appearance of this important landmark be altered, 
On the 10th February, they cast anchor “in sight of the port of 
Surat,” that is, as the subsequent text clearly shows, in “Swally 
Roads”’ off the mouth of the Tapti. 
As in many other cases, so in that of Surat, travellers and navi- 
gators used the name of marts far up shallow rivers or estuaries as 
if they were at the mouths ; and hence has arisen much of the lament- 
ation about the shoaling of Indian ports, which do not now, and 
never did, float a large vessel fairly laden. 
When our traveller got ashore, he and his friends in vain required 
“coaches” to carry them to Surat, and he observes that “the oxen 
which draw the same are fair, large, white, with two bunches like 
those of some camels.” The Hditor says that “ two-humped oxen are 
occasionally found.” But a better explanation is in Della Valle’s own 
next sentence, where he says, ‘“‘'To the seaside came no coach.” The 
sentence is a diary-entry made from hearsay before he had seen a — 
Gujarat bullock. 
After a day or two, he got “coaches” and went to Surat, where 
every one made a welcome guest of him, What he did for them if 
they called upon him at Rome on his return, some of us can conjecture 
from experience. 
