“Shang p’a Tsi-cheu, hia-pa Kun-lun,
  Chen mi t’uo shih, jin chuen mo tsun."[1]

Meaning:—­

  “With Kunlun to starboard, and larboard the Cheu,
  Keep conning your compass, whatever you do,
  Or to Davy Jones’ Locker go vessel and crew.”

(Ritter, IV. 1017; Reinaud, I. 18; A.  Hamilton, II. 402; Mem. conc. les Chinois, XIV. 53.)

NOTE 3.—­Pauthier reads the name of the kingdom Soucat, but I adhere to the readings of the G.T., Lochac and Locac, which are supported by Ramusio.  Pauthier’s C and the Bern MS. have le chac and le that, which indicate the same reading.

Distance and other particulars point, as Hugh Murray discerns, to the east coast of the Malay Peninsula, or (as I conceive) to the territory now called Siam, including the said coast, as subject or tributary from time immemorial.

The kingdom of Siam is known to the Chinese by the name of Sien-Lo.  The Supplement to Ma Twan-lin’s Encyclopaedia describes Sien-Lo as on the sea-board to the extreme south of Chen-ching.  “It originally consisted of two kingdoms, Sien and Lo-hoh.  The Sien people are the remains of a tribe which in the year (A.D. 1341) began to come down upon the Lo-hoh, and united with the latter into one nation....  The land of the Lo-hoh consists of extended plains, but not much agriculture is done."[2]

In this Lo or LO-HOH, which apparently formed the lower part of what is now Siam, previous to the middle of the 14th century, I believe that we have our Traveller’s Locac.  The latter half of the name may be either the second syllable of Lo-Hoh, for Polo’s c often represents h; or it may be the Chinese Kwo or Kwe, “kingdom,” in the Canton and Fo-kien pronunciation (i.e. the pronunciation of Polo’s mariners) kok; Lo-kok, “the kingdom of Lo.” Sien-LO-KOK is the exact form of the Chinese name of Siam which is used by Bastian.

What was this kingdom of Lo which occupied the northern shores of the Gulf of Siam?  Chinese scholars generally say that Sien-Lo means Siam and Laos; but this I cannot accept, if Laos is to bear its ordinary geographical sense, i.e. of a country bordering Siam on the north-east and north.  Still there seems a probability that the usual interpretation may be correct, when properly explained.

[Regarding the identification of Locac with Siam, Mr. G. Phillips writes (Jour.  China B.R.A.S., XXI., 1886, p. 34, note):  “I can only fully endorse what Col.  Yule says upon this subject, and add a few extracts of my own taken from the article on Siam given in the Wu-pe-che.  It would appear that previously to 1341 a country called Lohoh (in Amoy pronunciation Lohok) existed, as Yule says, in what is now called Lower Siam, and at that date became incorporated with Sien.  In the 4th year