The geographical indication of this city of porcelain, as at the place where a branch of the River of Kinsay flows off towards Zayton, points to a notion prevalent in the Middle Ages as to the interdivergence of rivers in general, and especially of Chinese rivers.  This notion will be found well embodied in the Catalan Map, and something like it in the maps of the Chinese themselves;[5] it is a ruling idea with Ibn Batuta, who, as we have seen (in note 2), speaks of the River of Zayton as connected in the interior with “the Great River,” and who travels by this waterway accordingly from Zayton to Kinsay, taking no notice of the mountains of Fo-kien.  So also (supra, p. 175) Rashiduddin had been led to suppose that the Great Canal extended to Zayton.  With apparently the same idea of one Great River of China with many ramifications, Abulfeda places most of the great cities of China upon “The River.”  The “Great River of China,” with its branches to Kinsay, is alluded to in a like spirit by Wassaf (supra, p. 213).  Polo has already indicated the same idea (p. 219).

Assuming this as the notion involved in the passage from Ramusio, the position of Jau-chau might be fairly described as that of Tingui is therein, standing as it does on the P’o-yang Lake, from which there is such a ramification of internal navigation, e.g. to Kinsay or Hang-chau fu directly by Kwansin, the Chang-shan portage already referred to (supra, p. 222), and the Ts’ien T’ang (and this is the Kinsay River line to which I imagine Polo here to refer), or circuitously by the Yang-tzu and Great Canal; to Canton by the portage of the Meiling Pass; and to the cities of Fo-kien either by the Kwansin River or by Kian-chan fu, further south, with a portage in each case across the Fo-kien mountains.  None of our maps give any idea of the extent of internal navigation in China. (See Klaproth, Mem. vol. iii.)

The story of the life-long period during which the porcelain clay was exposed to temper long held its ground, and probably was only dispelled by the publication of the details of the King-te chen manufacture by Pere d’Entrecolles in the Lettres Edifiantes.

NOTE 6.—­The meagre statement in the French texts shows merely that Polo had heard of the Fo-kien dialect.  The addition from Ramusio shows further that he was aware of the unity of the written character throughout China, but gives no indication of knowledge of its peculiar principles, nor of the extent of difference in the spoken dialects.  Even different districts of Fo-kien, according to Martini, use dialects so different that they understand each other with difficulty (108).

[Mendoza already said:  “It is an admirable thing to consider how that in that kingdome they doo speake manie languages, the one differing from the other:  yet generallie in writing they doo understand one the other, and in speaking not.” (Parke’s Transl. p. 93.)]