The position of Lambri would render it one of the first points of Sumatra made by navigators from Arabia and India; and this seems at one time to have caused the name to be applied to the whole Island.  Thus Rashiduddin speaks of the very large Island LAMURI lying beyond Ceylon, and adjoining the country of Sumatra; Odoric also goes from India across the Ocean to a certain country called LAMORI, where he began to lose sight of the North Star.  He also speaks of the camphor, gold, and lign-aloes which it produced, and proceeds thence to Sumoltra in the same Island.[1] It is probable that the verzino or brazil-wood of Ameri (L’Ameri, i.e.  Lambri?) which appears in the mercantile details of Pegolotti was from this part of Sumatra.  It is probable also that the country called Nanwuli, which the Chinese Annals report, with Sumuntula and others, to have sent tribute to the Great Kaan in 1286, was this same Lambri which Polo tells us called itself subject to the Kaan.

In the time of the Sung Dynasty ships from T’swan-chau (or Zayton) bound for Tashi, or Arabia, used to sail in forty days to a place called Lanli-poi (probably this is also Lambri, Lambri-puri?).  There they passed the winter, i.e. the south-west monsoon, just as Marco Polo’s party did at Sumatra, and sailing again when the wind became fair, they reached Arabia in sixty days. (Bretschneider, p. 16.)

[The theory of Sir H. Yule is confirmed by Chinese authors quoted by Mr. Groeneveldt (Notes on the Malay Archipelago, pp. 98-100):  “The country of Lambri is situated due west of Sumatra, at a distance of three days sailing with a fair wind; it lies near the sea and has a population of only about a thousand families....  On the east the country is bordered by Litai, on the west and the north by the sea, and on the south by high mountains, at the south of which is the sea again....  At the north-west of this country, in the sea, at a distance of half a day, is a flat mountain, called the Hat-island; the sea at the west of it is the great ocean, and is called the Ocean of Lambri.  Ships coming from the west all take this island as a landmark.”  Mr. Groeneveldt adds:  “Lambri [according to his extracts from Chinese authors] must have been situated on the north-western corner of the island of Sumatra, on or near the spot of the present Achin:  we see that it was bounded by the sea on the north and the west, and that the Indian Ocean was called after this insignificant place, because it was considered to begin there.  Moreover, the small island at half a day’s distance, called Hat-island, perfectly agrees with the small islands Bras or Nasi, lying off Achin, and of which the former, with its newly-erected lighthouse, is a landmark for modern navigation, just what it is said in our text to have been for the natives then.  We venture to think that the much discussed situation of Marco Polo’s Lambri is definitely