Faith.  Then they sailed on till they reached Haru (see on my map Aru on the East Coast), which did likewise.  At this last place they enquired for SAMUDRA, which seems to have been the special object of their mission, and found that they had passed it.  Accordingly they retraced their course to PERLAK, and after converting that place went on to SAMUDRA, where they converted Mara Silu the King. (See note 1, ch. x. above.) This passage is of extreme interest as naming four out of Marco’s six kingdoms, and in positions quite accordant with his indications.  As noticed by Mr. Braddell, from whose abstract I take the passage, the circumstance of the party having passed Samudra unwittingly is especially consistent with the site we have assigned to it near the head of the Bay of Pasei, as a glance at the map will show.

Valentyn observes:  “Fansur can be nought else than the famous Pantsur, no longer known indeed by that name, but a kingdom which we become acquainted with through Hamza Pantsuri, a celebrated Poet, and native of this Pantsur.  It lay in the north angle of the Island, and a little west of Achin:  it formerly was rife with trade and population, but would have been utterly lost in oblivion had not Hamza Pantsuri made us again acquainted with it.”  Nothing indeed could well be “a little west of Achin”; this is doubtless a slip for “a little down the west coast from Achin.”  Hamza Fantsuri, as he is termed by Professor Veth, who also identifies Fantsur with Barus, was a poet of the first half of the 17th century, who in his verses popularised the mystical theology of Shamsuddin Shamatrani (supra, p. 291), strongly tinged with pantheism.  The works of both were solemnly burnt before the great mosque of Achin about 1640. (J.  Ind.  Arch. V. 312 seqq; Valentyn, Sumatra, in Vol.  V., p. 21; Veth, Atchin, Leiden, 1873, p. 38.)

Mas’udi says that the Fansur Camphor was found most plentifully in years rife with storms and earthquakes.  Ibn Batuta gives a jumbled and highly incorrect account of the product, but one circumstance that he mentions is possibly founded on a real superstition, viz., that no camphor was formed unless some animal had been sacrificed at the root of the tree, and the best quality only then when a human victim had been offered.  Nicolo Conti has a similar statement:  “The Camphor is found inside the tree, and if they do not sacrifice to the gods before they cut the bark, it disappears and is no more seen.”  Beccari, in our day, mentions special ceremonies used by the Kayans of Borneo, before they commence the search.  These superstitions hinge on the great uncertainty of finding camphor in any given tree, after the laborious process of cutting it down and splitting it, an uncertainty which also largely accounts for the high price.  By far the best of the old accounts of the product is that quoted by Kazwini from Mahomed Ben Zakaria Al-Razi:  “Among the number of marvellous