The large family of the king was one of the stock marvels.  Odoric says:  “ZAMPA is a very fine country, having great store of victuals and all good things.  The king of the country, it was said when I was there [circa 1323], had, what with sons and with daughters, a good two hundred children; for he hath many wives and other women whom he keepeth.  This king hath also 14,000 tame elephants....  And other folk keep elephants there just as commonly as we keep oxen here” (pp. 95-96).  The latter point illustrates what Polo says of elephants, and is scarcely an exaggeration in regard to all the southern Indo-Chinese States. (See note to Odoric u.s.)

NOTE 3.—­Champa Proper and the adjoining territories have been from time immemorial the chief seat of the production of lign-aloes or eagle-wood.  Both names are misleading, for the thing has nought to do either with aloes or eagles; though good Bishop Pallegoix derives the latter name from the wood being speckled like an eagle’s plumage.  It is in fact through Aquila, Agila, from Aguru, one of the Sanskrit names of the article, whilst that is possibly from the Malay Kayu (wood)-gahru, though the course of the etymology is more likely to be the other way; and [Greek:  Aloae] is perhaps a corruption of the term which the Arabs apply to it, viz. Al-’Ud, “The Wood.”

[It is probable that the first Portuguese who had to do with eagle-wood called it by its Arabic name, aghaluhy, or malayalam, agila; whence pao de’ aguila “aguila wood.”  It was translated into Latin as lignum aquilae, and after into modern languages, as bois d’aigle, eagle-wood, adlerholz, etc. (A.  Cabaton, les Chams, p. 50.) Mr. Groeneveldt (Notes, pp. 141-142) writes:  “Lignum aloes is the wood of the Aquilaria agallocha, and is chiefly known as sinking incense.  The Pen-ts’au Kang-mu describes it as follows:  ’Sinking incense, also called honey incense.  It comes from the heart and the knots of a tree and sinks in water, from which peculiarity the name sinking incense is derived....  In the Description of Annam we find it called honey incense, because it smells like honey.’  The same work, as well as the Nan-fang Ts’au-mu Chuang, further informs us that this incense was obtained in all countries south of China, by felling the old trees and leaving them to decay, when, after some time, only the heart, the knots, and some other hard parts remained.  The product was known under different names, according to its quality or shape, and in addition to the names given above, we find fowl bones, horse-hoofs, and green cinnamon; these latter names, however, are seldom used.”—­H.C.]

The fine eagle-wood of Champa is the result of disease in a leguminous tree, Aloexylon Agallochum; whilst an inferior kind, though of the same aromatic properties, is derived from a tree of an entirely different order, Aquilaria Agallocha, and is found as far north as Silhet.