After six days journey is Quelinfu, a great city with three bridges, each of which is eight paces broad, and above an hundred paces long.  The men are great merchants and manufacturers, and the women are fair and delicately shaped.  The country produces plenty of ginger and galingal, and great abundance of silk and cotton.  I was told, but saw them not, that they have hens without feathers, hairy like cats, which yet lay eggs, and are good to eat[16].  In this part of the country there are many lions, which make the ways very dangerous.  After three days journey, we arrive in a populous country inhabited by idolaters, who make great quantities of silk stuffs.  The chief city is Unguem, near which abundance of sugar is produced, and sent from thence to Cambalu.  Before the reduction of this country by the great Khan, the inhabitants of this country could only manufacture a bad kind of sugar, by boiling down the juice of the cane into a black paste; but certain inhabitants from Babylonia, taught them refine it by means of the ashes of a certain tree[17].  Fifteen miles farther is the city of Cangiu, still in the province of Concha, and here the Khan has always an army in readiness for keeping the country under subjection.  Through this city there runs a river of a mile broad, with handsome buildings on both sides, and the river is constantly covered with vessels carrying sugar and other goods.  This river disembogues itself at the distance of five days journey south-east from Cangiu, into the sea at Zaitum all the country between being extremely pleasant, and abounding in trees and shrubs of camphor.  Zaitum is a famous port, and much frequented by ships with rich cargoes from India, for the supply of Mangi and Kathay, and from this port the productions of these regions are dispersed all over India.  At this port such quantities of pepper are imported, that what comes through Alexandria into our western world is not to be compared to it, being hardly an hundredth part.  The concourse of merchants to this famous emporium is incredible, as it is one of the most commodious ports in the whole world, and is exceedingly productive in revenue to the great Khan, who receives ten in the hundred of all merchandize.  The merchants pay likewise so high for freights, that not above a half of their cargoes remains to themselves for sale, and yet of that moiety they make immense profits.  The inhabitants of Zaitum are idolaters, and much given to pleasure, and in it there are many artizans employed in embroidery and arras-work[18].

This river is large, wide, and swift, one arm of it reaching to Quinsai, and the other to Zaitum[19], and at the parting of these branches, the city of Tringui is situated, where porcelain dishes are made[20].  I was told of a certain earth which is cast up into conical heaps, and left exposed to the weather for thirty or forty years without stirring; after which, refined by time, it is made into dishes, which are