Published online by Cambridge University Press: 01 June 2011
1. In the entrance to India the Less are [date] palms, giving a very great quantity of the sweetest fruit; but further on in India they are not found.
2. In this lesser India are many things worthy to be noted with wonder; for there are no springs, no rivers, no ponds; nor does it ever rain, except during three months, viz., between the middle of May and the middle of August; and (wonderful!) notwithstanding this, the soil is most kindly and fertile, and during the nine months of the year in which it does not rain, so much dew is found every day upon the ground that it is not dried up by the sun's rays till the middle of the third hour of the day.
3. Here be many and boundless marvels; and in this First India beginneth, as it were, another world; for the men and women be all black, and they have for covering nothing but a strip of cotton tied round the loins, and the end of it flung over the naked back. Wheaten bread is there not eaten by the natives, although wheat they have in plenty; but rice is eaten with its seasoning, only boiled in water. And they have milk and butter and oil, which they often eat uncooked. In this India there be no horses, nor mules, nor camels, nor elephants; but only kine, with which they do all their doings that they have to do, whether it be riding, or carrying, or field labour.
To save this book to your Kindle, first ensure no-reply@cambridge.org is added to your Approved Personal Document E-mail List under your Personal Document Settings on the Manage Your Content and Devices page of your Amazon account. Then enter the ‘name’ part of your Kindle email address below. Find out more about saving to your Kindle.
Note you can select to save to either the @free.kindle.com or @kindle.com variations. ‘@free.kindle.com’ emails are free but can only be saved to your device when it is connected to wi-fi. ‘@kindle.com’ emails can be delivered even when you are not connected to wi-fi, but note that service fees apply.
Find out more about the Kindle Personal Document Service.
To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Dropbox.
To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Google Drive.