When the Portuguese, in the 16th century, recovered China to European knowledge, Zayton was no longer the great haven of foreign trade; but yet the old name was not extinct among the mariners of Western Asia.  Giovanni d’Empoli, in 1515, writing about China from Cochin, says:  “Ships carry spices thither from these parts.  Every year there go thither from Sumatra 60,000 cantars of pepper, and 15,000 or 20,000 from Cochin and Malabar, worth 15 to 20 ducats a cantar; besides ginger (?), mace, nutmegs, incense, aloes, velvet, European goldwire, coral, woollens, etc.  The Grand Can is the King of China, and he dwells at ZEITON.”  Giovanni hoped to get to Zeiton before he died.[2]

The port of T’swan-chau is generally called in our modern charts Chinchew.  Now Chincheo is the name given by the old Portuguese navigators to the coast of Fo-kien, as well as to the port which they frequented there, and till recently I supposed this to be T’swan-chau.  But Mr. Phillips, in his paper alluded to at p. 232, asserted that by Chincheo modern Spaniards and Portuguese designated (not T’swan-chau but) Chang-chau, a great city 60 miles W.S.W. of T’swan-chau, on a river entering Amoy Harbour.  On turning, with this hint, to the old maps of the 17th century, I found that their Chincheo is really Chang-chau.  But Mr. Phillips also maintains that Chang-chau, or rather its port, a place formerly called Gehkong and now Haiteng, is Zayton.  Mr. Phillips does not adduce any precise evidence to show that this place was known as a port in Mongol times, far less that it was known as the most famous haven in the world; nor was I able to attach great weight to the arguments which he adduced.  But his thesis, or a modification of it, has been taken up and maintained with more force, as already intimated, by the Rev. Dr. Douglas.

The latter makes a strong point in the magnificent character of Amoy Harbour, which really is one of the grandest havens in the world, and thus answers better to the emphatic language of Polo, and of Ibn Batuta, than the river of T’swan-chau.  All the rivers of Fo-kien, as I learn from Dr. Douglas himself, are rapidly silting up; and it is probable that the river of Chinchew presented, in the 13th and 14th centuries, a far more impressive aspect as a commercial basin than it does now.  But still it must have been far below Amoy Harbour in magnitude, depth, and accessibility.  I have before recognised this, but saw no way to reconcile the proposed deduction with the positive historical facts already stated, which absolutely (to my mind) identify the Zayton of Polo and Rashiduddin with the Chinese city and port of T’swan-chau.  Dr. Douglas, however, points out that the whole northern shore of Amoy Harbour, with the Islands of Amoy and Quemoy, are within the Fu or Department of T’swan-chau; and the latter name would, in Chinese parlance, apply equally to the city and to any part of the department.  He cites