414 
present at these pompes; which are not commonly used for all 
men; but only for kings, priests, and noblemen/’ 
As no traces now remain of the ancient city of Calicut, it is 
impossible to speak of its magnificence when Vertomannus wrote: 
but, considering the wealth and power of the Mahomedans, and 
the splendour of their cities in the north of India at that period; 
many of which, as well as Bezenagur, the metropolis of the great 
Hindoo empire of Narsinga, the Roman traveller had just visited; 
it is singular he should call Calicut the “ chiefest, and metropo- 
litan of all the cities of India; whose king in royal majesty ex- 
ceeded all the kings of the east; and was therefore in the Mala- 
bar language called Samory , or Zamorine , that is to say, God on 
the earth. 
That Calicut was the principal city in Malabar, and perhaps 
the greatest emporium in the east, there is little doubt; although 
now reduced to a stragging village of fishermen: but as Verto- 
mannus describes the capital of Narsinga to be a city eight miles 
in circuit, and of proportionable wealth and grandeur, a monarch 
maintaining four hundred war elephants, and when he rode out or 
went a hunting, attended by six thousand horsemen, it appears 
extraordinary he should speak of Calicut in such high terms: not 
so much of the city as the palace, which, he says, “ contained) no 
less than a mile in circuit; the wall is not high; the building is 
fair, with beams well joining the frame, clumsily wrought, and 
carved with the figures and shapes of devils on every side. What 
pearls and precious stones the king weareth upon him, cannot be 
expressed for the greatness of the thing; for doubtless it exceeded) 
