India.--E.]

Having completed all our business at Basora, I and my companion, William
Shales, embarked in company with seventy barks, all laden with
merchandize; every bark having fourteen men to drag it up the river,
like our west country barges on the river Thames; and we were forty-four
days in going up against the stream to Bagdat. We there, after paying
our custom, joined with other merchants, to form a caravan, bought
camels, and hired men to load and drive them, furnished ourselves with
rice, butter, dates, honey made of dates, and onions; besides which,
every merchant bought a certain number of live sheep, and hired certain
shepherds to drive them along with us. We also bought tents to lie in,
and to put our goods under; and in this caravan of ours there were four
thousand camels laden with spices and other rich goods. These camels can
subsist very well for two or three days without water, feeding on
thistles, wormwood, _magdalene_, and other coarse weeds they find by the
way. The government of the caravans, the deciding of all quarrels that
occur, and the apportionment of all duties to be paid, are committed to
the care of some one rich and experienced merchant in the company, whose
honour and honesty can best be confided in. We spent forty days in our
journey from Bagdat to Aleppo, travelling at the rate of from twenty to
twenty-four miles a-day, resting ourselves commonly from two in the
afternoon till three next morning, at which time we usually began our
journey.

Eight days journey from Bagdat, near to a town called Heit, where we
cross the Euphrates in boats, and about three miles from that place,
there is a valley in which are many mouths, or holes, continually
throwing out, in great abundance, a black kind of substance like tar,
which serves all this country for paying their boats and barks. Every