1539.—"E embarcando-se ... partio, eo forão accompanhando dez ou doze balões ate a Ilha de Upe...."—Pinto, ch. xiv.
1634.—
"Neste tempo da terra para a armada
Balões, e cal' luzes cruzar vimos...."
Malaca Conquistada, iii. 44.
1673.—"The President commanded his own Baloon (a Barge of State, of Two and Twenty Oars) to attend me."—Fryer, 70.
1755.—"The Burmas has now Eighty Ballongs, none of which as [sic] great Guns."—Letter from Capt. R. Jackson, in Dalrymple Or. Repert. i. 195.
1811.—"This is the simplest of all boats, and consists merely of the trunk of a tree hollowed out, to the extremities of which pieces of wood are applied, to represent a stern and prow; the two sides are boards joined by rottins or small bambous without nails; no iron whatsoever enters into their construction.... The Balaums are used in the district of Chittagong."—Solvyns, iii.
BALSORA, BUSSORA, &c., n.p. These old forms used to be familiar from their use in the popular version of the Arabian Nights after Galland. The place is the sea-port city of Basra at the mouth of the Shat-al-'Arab, or United Euphrates and Tigris. [Burton (Ar. Nights, x. 1) writes Bassorah.]
1298.—"There is also on the river as you go from Baudas to Kisi, a great city called Bastra surrounded by woods in which grow the best dates in the world."—Marco Polo, Bk. i. ch. 6.