Now that I have told you about the ships which sail upon the Ocean Sea and among the Isles of India, let us proceed to speak of the various wonders of India; but first and foremost I must tell you about a number of Islands that there are in that part of the Ocean Sea where we now are, I mean the Islands lying to the eastward.  So let us begin with an Island which is called Chipangu.

NOTE 1.—­Pine [Pinus sinensis] is [still] the staple timber for ship-building both at Canton and in Fo-kien.  There is a very large export of it from Fu-chau, and even the chief fuel at that city is from a kind of fir.  Several varieties of pine-wood are also brought down the rivers for sale at Canton. (N. and Q., China and Japan, I. 170; Fortune, I. 286; Doolittle.)

NOTE 2.—­Note the one rudder again. (Supra, Bk.  I. ch. xix. note 3.) One of the shifting masts was probably a bowsprit, which, according to Lecomte, the Chinese occasionally use, very slight, and planted on the larboard bow.

NOTE 3.—­The system of water-tight compartments, for the description of which we have to thank Ramusio’s text, in our own time introduced into European construction, is still maintained by the Chinese, not only in sea-going junks, but in the larger river craft. (See Mid.  Kingd. II. 25; Blakiston, 88; Deguignes, I. 204-206.)

NOTE 4.—­This still remains quite correct, hemp, old nets, and the fibre of a certain creeper being used for oakum.  The wood-oil is derived from a tree called Tong-shu, I do not know if identical with the wood-oil trees of Arakan and Pegu (Dipterocarpus laevis).

["What goes under the name of ‘wood-oil’ to-day in China is the poisonous oil obtained from the nuts of Elaeococca verrucosa.  It is much used for painting and caulking ships.” (Bretschneider, Hist. of Bot.  Disc. I. p. 4.)—­H.C.]

NOTE 5.—­The junks that visit Singapore still use these sweeps. (J.  Ind.  Arch. II. 607.) Ibn Batuta puts a much larger number of men to each.  It will be seen from his account below that great ropes were attached to the oars to pull by, the bulk of timber being too large to grasp; as in the old French galleys wooden manettes or grips, were attached to the oar for the same purpose.

NOTE 6.—­The Chinese sea-going vessels of those days were apparently larger than was at all common in European navigation.  Marco here speaks of 200 (or in Ramusio up to 300) mariners, a large crew indeed for a merchant vessel, but not so great as is implied in Odoric’s statement, that the ship in which he went from India to China had 700 souls on board.  The numbers carried by Chinese junks are occasionally still enormous.  “In February, 1822, Captain Pearl, of the English ship Indiana, coming through Caspar Straits, fell in with the cargo and crew of a wrecked junk, and saved 198 persons out of 1600, with whom she had left Amoy, whom he landed at Pontianak.  This humane act cost him 11,000_l._” (Quoted by Williams from Chin.  Rep. VI. 149.)