From the information of Ebn Wahab, we learn that Cumdan, where the emperor of China keeps his court, is a very large and extremely populous city, divided into two parts by a very long and broad street.  That the emperor, his chief ministers, the supreme judge, the eunuchs, the soldiery, and all belonging to the imperial household, dwelt in that part of the city which is on the right hand eastward; and that the people were not admitted into that part of the city, which is watered by canals from different rivers, the borders of which are, planted with trees, and adorned by magnificent palaces.  That portion of the city on the left hand, westwards from the great street, is inhabited by the ordinary kind of people, and the merchants, where also are great squares and markets for all the necessaries of life.  At day-break every morning, the officers of the royal household, with the inferior servants, purveyors, and the domestics of the grandees of the court, come into that division of the city, some on horseback, and others on foot, to the public markets, and the shops of those who deal in all sorts of goods, where they buy whatever they want, and do not return again till their occasions call them back next morning.  The city is very pleasantly situate in the midst of a most fertile soil, watered by several rivers, and hardly deficient in any thing except palm trees, which grow not there.

In our time a discovery has been made, of a circumstance quite new and unknown to our ancestors.  No one ever imagined that the great sea which extends from the Indies to China had any communication with the sea of Syria.  Yet we have heard, that in the sea of Rum, or the Mediterranean, there was found the wreck of an Arabian ship, which had been shattered by a tempest, in which all her men had perished.  Her remains were driven by the wind and weather into the sea of the Chozars, and thence by the canal of the Mediterranean sea, and were at last thrown upon the coast of Syria.  Hence it is evident, that the sea surrounds all the country of China and Sila or Cila, the uttermost parts of Turkestan, and the country of the Chozars, and that it communicates by the strait with that which washes the coast of Syria.  This is proved by the structure of the wreck; of which the planks were not nailed or bolted, like all those built in the Mediterranean, or on the coast of Syria, but joined together in an extraordinary manner, as if sewed, and none but the ships of Siraff are so fastened.  We have also heard it reported, that ambergris has been found on the coast of Syria, which seems hard to believe, and was unknown to former times.  If this be true, it is impossible that amber should have been thrown up on the sea of Syria, but by the sea of Aden and Kolsum, which has communication with the seas where amber is found.  And as God has put a separation between these seas, it must have necessarily been, that this amber was driven from the Indian Seas into the others, in the same direction with the vessel of Siraff[6].