[Footnote 3:  So impatient were the Venetians to grasp the trade of Alexandria that Marino Sanuto, about the year 1321 A.D., endeavoured to excite a new crusade in order to wrest it from the Sultan of Egypt by force of arms, Secreta Fidelium Crucis, in BONGARS, Gesta Dei per Francos, Hanau, 1611.  ADAM SMITH, Wealth of Nations, b. iv. ch, vii DARU, Hist. de Venise, lib. xix, vol. iv, p. 88.]

[Footnote 4:  GIBBON, Decl. and Fall, ch. lx.  The last of the Venetion “argosies” which reached the shores of England was cast away on the Isle of Wight, A.D. 1587.]

Another great event which stimulated the commercial activity of the Italians in the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries, was the extraordinary progress of the Mongols, who in an incredibly short space of time absorbed Central Asia into one powerful empire, overthrew the ancient monarchy of China, penetrated to the heart of Russia, and directed their arms with equal success both against Poland and Japan.  The popes and the sovereigns of Europe, alike alarmed for their dominions and their faith, despatched ambassadors to the Great Khan; the mission resulted in allaying apprehension for the further advance of their formidable neighbours towards the west, and the vigilant merchants of Venice addressed themselves to effect an opening for trade in the new domains of the Tartar princes.

It is to this commercial enterprise that we are indebted for the first authentic information regarding China and India, that reached Europe after the silence of the middle ages; and the voyages of the Venetians, in some of which the realities of travel appear as extra-ordinary as the incidents of romance, contain accounts of Ceylon equally interesting and reliable.

MARCO POLO, who left Venice as a youth, in the year 1271, and resided seventeen years at the court of Kubla Khan, was the first European who penetrated to China Proper; whence he embarked in A.D. 1291, at Fo-Kien, and passing through the Straits of Malacca, rested at Ceylon, on his homeward route by Ormuz.

He does not name the port in Ceylon at which he landed, but he calls the king Sender-naz, a name which may possibly be identified with the Malay Chandra-banu, who twice invaded the island during the reign of Pandita Prakrama-bahu III.[1]

[Footnote 1:  Pandita Prakrama Bahoo III. was also called Kalikalla Saahitya Sargwajnya,—­TURNOUR’S Epitome, p. 44.]

He repeats the former exaggerated account as to the dimensions of Ceylon; he says that it was believed to have been anciently larger still, and he shows incidentally that as early as the thirteenth century, the Arab sailors possessed charts of the island which they used in navigating the Indian seas.[1] Then, as now, the universal costume of the Singhalese was the cotton “comboy,” worn only on the lower half of the body[2], their grains were sesamum and rice; their food the latter with milk and flesh-meat;