And I assure you that the Great Kaan has as large customs and revenues from this kingdom of Chonka as from Kinsay, aye and more too.[NOTE 7]

We have now spoken of but three out of the nine kingdoms of Manzi, to wit Yanju and Kinsay and Fuju.  We could tell you about the other six, but it would be too long a business; so we will say no more about them.

And now you have heard all the truth about Cathay and Manzi and many other countries, as has been set down in this Book; the customs of the people and the various objects of commerce, the beasts and birds, the gold and silver and precious stones, and many other matters have been rehearsed to you.  But our Book as yet does not contain nearly all that we purpose to put therein.  For we have still to tell you all about the people of India and the notable things of that country, which are well worth the describing, for they are marvellous indeed.  What we shall tell is all true, and without any lies.  And we shall set down all the particulars in writing just as Messer Marco Polo related them.  And he well knew the facts, for he remained so long in India, and enquired so diligently into the manners and peculiarities of the nations, that I can assure you there never was a single man before who learned so much and beheld so much as he did.

NOTE 1.—­The Laurus (or Cinnamomum) Camphora, a large timber tree, grows abundantly in Fo-kien.  A description of the manner in which camphor is produced at a very low cost, by sublimation from the chopped twigs, etc., will be found in the Lettres Edifiantes, XXIV. 19 seqq.; and more briefly in Hedde by Rondot, p. 35.  Fo-kien alone has been known to send to Canton in one year 4000 piculs (of 133-1/3 lbs. each), but the average is 2500 to 3000 (Ib.).

NOTE 2.—­When Marco says Zayton is one of the two greatest commercial ports in the world, I know not if he has another haven in his eye, or is only using an idiom of the age.  For in like manner Friar Odoric calls Java “the second best of all Islands that exist”; and Kansan (or Shen-si) the “second best province in the world, and the best populated.”  But apart from any such idiom, Ibn Batuta pronounces Zayton to be the greatest haven in the world.

Martini relates that when one of the Emperors wanted to make war on Japan, the Province of Fo-kien offered to bridge the interval with their vessels!

ZAYTON, as Martini and Deguignes conjectured, is T’SWAN-CHAU FU, or CHWAN-CHAU FU (written by French scholars Thsiouan-tcheou-fou), often called in our charts, etc., Chinchew, a famous seaport of Fo-kien about 100 miles in a straight line S.W. by S. of Fu-chau, Klaproth supposes that the name by which it was known to the Arabs and other Westerns was corrupted from an old Chinese name of the city, given in the Imperial Geography, viz.  TSEU-T’UNG.[1] Zaitun commended itself to Arabian ears, being the Arabic for an olive-tree (whence Jerusalem is called Zaituniyah); but the corruption (if such it be) must be of very old date, as the city appears to have received its present name in the 7th or 8th century.