When the Portuguese first reached those regions Pedir was the leading state upon the coast, and certainly no state called Sumatra continued to exist.  Whether the city continued to exist even in decay is not easy to discern.  The Ain-i-Akbari says that the best civet is that which is brought from the seaport town of Sumatra, in the territory of Achin, and is called Sumatra Zabad; but this may have been based on old information.  Valentyn seems to recognise the existence of a place of note called Samadra or Samotdara, though it is not entered on his map.  A famous mystic theologian who flourished under the great King of Achin, Iskandar Muda, and died in 1630, bore the name of Shamsuddin Shamatrani, which seems to point to the city of Sumatra as his birth place.[2] The most distinct mention that I know of the city so called, in the Portuguese period, occurs in the soi-disant “Voyage which Juan Serano made when he fled from Malacca,” in 1512, published by Lord Stanley of Alderley, at the end of his translation of Barbosa.  This man speaks of the “island of Samatra” as named from “a city of this northern part.”  And on leaving Pedir, having gone down the northern coast, he says, “I drew towards the south and south-east direction, and reached to another country and city which is called Samatra,” and so on.  Now this describes the position in which the city of Sumatra should have been if it existed.  But all the rest of the tract is mere plunder from Varthema.[3]

There is, however, a like intimation in a curious letter respecting the Portuguese discoveries, written from Lisbon in 1515, by a German, Valentine Moravia, who was probably the same Valentyn Fernandez, the German, who published the Portuguese edition of Marco Polo at Lisbon in 1502, and who shows an extremely accurate conception of Indian geography.  He says:  “La maxima insula la quale e chiamata da Marcho Polo Veneto Iava Minor, et al presente si chiama Sumotra, da un emporie di dicta insula” (printed by De Gubernatis, Viagg.  Ita. etc., p. 170).

Several considerations point to the probability that the states of Pasei and Sumatra had become united, and that the town of Sumatra may have been represented by the Pacem of the Portuguese.[4] I have to thank Mr. G. Phillips for the copy of a small Chinese chart showing the northern coast of the island, which he states to be from “one of about the 13th century.”  I much doubt the date, but the map is valuable as showing the town of Sumatra (Sumantala).  This seems to be placed in the Gulf of Pasei, and very near where Pasei itself still exists.  An extract of a “Chinese account of about A.D. 1413” accompanied the map.  This states that the town was situated some distance up a river, so as to be reached in two tides.  There was a village at the mouth of the river called Talumangkin.[5]

[Mr. E.H.  Parker writes (China Review, XXIV. p. 102):  “Colonel Yule’s remarks about Pasei are borne out by Chinese History (Ming, 325, 20, 24), which states that in 1521 Pieh-tu-lu (Pestrello [for Perestrello ?]) having failed in China ‘went for’ Pa-si.  Again ’from Pa-si, Malacca, to Luzon, they swept the seas, and all the other nations were afraid of them.’”—­H.  C]