A History of South India from Prehistoric Times to the Fall of Vijayanagar c18.39

c18.39

and there horses from Persia disembarked. On every one, customs duty of 25 ducats had to be paid before they could proceed on the fifteen-day journey to Vijayanagar. Another shipbuilding centre, owing to the excellent timber in the neighbourhood, was Dharmapatnam, 12 miles from Cannanore. Barbosa (1515) noted that wheat, rice, millet and gingelly, besides fine muslins and calicos produced in the Bāhmani kingdom, were exported from Chaul. A few miles inland from Chaul was a big market where ‘they bring their goods laden on great droves of trained oxen with pack-saddles, like those of Castille; a driver drives 20 or 30 oxen before him’. Of Malabar, Barbosa makes the very true remark: ‘albeit the country is but small, yet it is so fulfilled of people, that it may well be called one town from Mount Dely to Coulam’ (Quilon). Caesar Frederick (1567) found much silk imported into Cochin from China, and sugar from Bengal. According to Ralph Fitch (1583-91) ‘all merchandise carried to Goa in a ship wherein were horses paid no custom in; the horses paid custom, and the goods paid nothing’. If there were no horses, the goods paid 8 per cent. ‘The Moores cannot pass except they have a passport from the Portugals.’ In Chaul there was great traffic in all sorts of spices and drugs, silk and cloth of silk, sandals, elephants' teeth and much ‘China work’. Fitch calls the palm tree ‘the profitablest tree in the world’ and notices the existence in Cambay of hospitals to keep lame dogs and cats, and for birds. ‘They will give meat to the ants.’