He talks about how in Mozambique they had a hooded snake who the Europeans would kill b/c of a gem on the back side of its head..........a cobra of course...........Mozambique is just north of S. Africa.....on the Indian ocean side..................it was called Portuguese East Africa......it is where the wife of our sec. of state is from........who married a now dead us senator from PA..........who died in a helicopter wreck.................a man who was an only child.............................and heir to the Heinz 57 ketchup billions...................................

The Six Voyages of John Baptista Tavernier (1678)

 
The six voyages of John Baptista Tavernier, Jean-Baptiste Tavernier, translated by John Phillips; R.L. and M.P., London.

To give it its full title – The six voyages of John Baptista Tavernier, a noble man of France now living, through Turky into Persia and the East-Indies, finished in the year 1670 giving an account of the state of those countries : illustrated with divers sculptures ; together with a new relation of the present Grand Seignor’s seraglio, by the same author / made English by J.P. – is a remarkable account of travel through 17th century Asia. Tavernier (1605-1689) was a French diamond merchant, traveller and pioneer of diamond trade with India, who covered by his own account, 180,000 miles (290,000 km) over the course of forty years and six voyages. Though he is best known for the discovery and sale of the 118-carat (24 g) blue diamond that he subsequently sold to Louis XIV of France in 1668, (it was stolen in 1792 and re-emerged in London as The Hope Diamond), his writings show that he was a keen observer of his time as well as a remarkable cultural anthropologist. (Wikipedia) The exquisite illustrations from Tavernier’s book can be seen here in our Image collection post. 

You can also read a nice post on Tavernier’s book over at the Res Obscura blog.