Once upon a time, a certain person went to gather simples among the mountains, and fell by some accident into a vale of which the sides were so steep that he was unable to get out again.  In this situation, he had to look about for some means to support life, and discovered this root, of which he made trial, and found that it served him both as food and cloathing; for it preserved his body in such a temperature, that the injuries of the weather had no evil influence upon him during a residence of several hundred years.  At length, by means of an earthquake, the mountains were rent, and he found a passage from the vale to his house, whence he had been so long absent.  But so many alterations had taken place during his long absence, that nobody would believe his story; till, on consulting the annals of his family, they found that one of them had been lost at the time he mentioned, which confirmed the truth of his relation.—­This is a fable, not even credited among the Chinese, invented merely to blazon forth the virtues of this wonderful root.

Sec.5. Removal of Dr Cunningham to Pulo Condore, with an Account of the Rise, Progress, and Ruin of that Factory.[334]

The English factory at Chusan was broken up in the year 1702, so that Dr Cunningham had very little time allowed him for making his proposed observations respecting China.  From this place he removed to another new settlement at Pulo Condore, in a small cluster of four or five islands, about fifteen leagues south of the west channel of the river of Camboja, usually called the Japanese river.[335] I am unable to say what were the advantages proposed from this factory; but, from the memoirs I have seen on the subject, this place seems to have been very ill chosen, and much worse managed.  The person who had at this time the management and direction of the affairs belonging to the East India Company in this distant part of the world, was one Mr Katchpole, who, according to the usual custom of the Europeans in eastern India at this period, took into the service a certain number of Macassers or native soldiers, by whose assistance he soon constructed a small fort for the protection of the factory.  So far as I can learn, the most indispensable necessaries of life, water, wood, and fish, were all that these islands ever afforded.

[Footnote 334:  This and the subsequent subdivision of the section are related historically by Harris.—­E.]

[Footnote 335:  Pulo Condore is in lat. 8 deg. 45’ N. long. 106 deg. 5’ E. and the object of a factory at this place was evidently to endeavour to secure a portion of the trade of China, from which the English at this time were excluded by the arts of the Portuguese at Macao, as we learn from the Annals; as also to combine some trade with Siam, Camboja, Tsiompa, Cochin-China, and Tonquin.—­E.]