296 
JOURNAL OF AN EMBASSY 
dred houses: so that, if the godon were not, you 
should be in danger to have all burnt in a trice. 
In the new town, is the king, and all his nobility 
and gentry. It is a city very great and populous^ 
and is made square, and with fair walls, and a 
great ditch round about it full of water, with 
many crocodiles in it: it hath twenty gates, and 
they be made of stone; for every square five 
gates. There are also many turrets for sentinels 
to watch, made of wood, and gilded with gold 
very fair. The streets are the fairest that ever 
I saw, as straight as a line from one gate to an¬ 
other, and so broad that ten or twenty men may 
ride afront through them. On both sides them, 
at every man’s door, is set a palm-tree, which is 
the nut-tree, which makes a very fair show, and 
a very commodious shadow, so that a man may 
walk in the shade all day. The houses be made 
of wood, and covered with tile. The king’s 
house is in the middle of the city, and is walled 
and ditched round about; and the buildings 
within are made of wood, very sumptuously 
gilded, and great workmanship is upon the fore¬ 
front, which is likewise very costly gilded. And 
the house wherein his pagoda or idol standeth is 
covered with tiles of silver, and all the w r alls are 
gilded with gold. Within the first gate of the 
king’s house is a great large room, on both sides 
whereof are houses made for the king’s elephants, 
