These animals are born with sorts of tumours under the belly and the breast, and these ripen, and after they are mature and have formed like matter, they have so much itching in them that they go to rub themselves against the trees, and the drops which fall from these tumours are of the best and most excellent musk, and the hunters, who pursue them with dogs and nets and other snares, follow their tracks by the smell, and they find these grains of fine musk, and by following them they catch them alive, and bring them to houses appointed for that purpose, where they entirely cut off these tumours with the skin, and they let them dry. These are the genuine musk pouches, of which very few are exported, because they falsify them, and they do it in this way. It must be known that on taking it from the living animal, they place many leeches on the wounds, and allow them to gorge themselves with blood, and when full they put them in the sun to dry, and of these they put so many that the animal falls dead without any blood, and afterwards they skin it, and with the skin they make several counterfeit pouches, which look like the real ones. Having pounded the leeches and reduced them to powder; with the powder they make grains in their hands, and add one weight of good musk taken from the real pouches, to a hundred of this blood of the leeches, and having mixed up the whole, they fill with it the counterfeit pouches, and they look very good. And they also esteem it in these parts as very fine, because the merchants through whose hands it passes adulterate it still further. The real musk is so strong that on putting it to the nostrils it causes the blood to issue. In this kingdom there are many elephants, horses and men devoted to war: and it is a country well supplied with provisions.
Further inland than the said kingdom of Ava, at five days' journey to the south-east is another city of Gentiles which has a ruler who is subject to the said King of Ava. This city is called Capelan,[297] and all round it are likewise found many and excellent rubies, which they bring to sell at the city and fair of Ava, and which are better than those of Ava.
Having passed the kingdom of Peigu, further along the coast to the south south-east towards Malaca, eighty-seven leagues from Martaban towards Malaca, and further on in the country is the kingdom of Ansiam,[298] which is of the Gentiles. And the king is a Gentile and a great ruler, and inland his borders are from this coast unto the other side, which is the coast of China: and he has seaports on both sides. He is the lord of many people both horse and foot, and of many elephants. And he does not allow any Moor to bear arms in his country. And from the kingdom of Peigu as far as a city which has a seaport, and is named Tanasery,[299] there are a hundred leagues. In this city there are many Moorish and Gentile merchants, who deal in all sorts of goods, and own ships, with which they navigate to Bengal, Malaca, and other parts. In the inland parts of this kingdom there grows much good benjuy, which is a resin of trees which the Moors call luban javi,[300] and it is of two kinds, that is to say, one which does not smell except in the fire, and the other of much scent, of which the good and genuine storax is made in the Levant, before extracting from it the oil, which in the Levant is extracted from it. And many ships of Moors and from other parts congregate at this port of Tanasary, and bring them copper, quicksilver, vermilion, scarlet cloth, silks, coloured velvets from Mekkah, saffron, coral, wrought and in strings, rose-water from Mekkah in little bottles of tinned copper, and it is sold by weight with the bottle; opium, Cambay stuffs, and all these goods fetch a high price at this place.