It is clear that Columbum is not Colombo in Ceylon, though the French editor is wrong in supposing that the latter city did not exist in the time of Jordanus, for it is mentioned by the modern name in Ibn Batuta’s travels, only a few years later. Jordanus evidently does not speak of Ceylon as one who had been there, and whilst treating of greater India, he says distinctly, “_In istâ Indiâ, me existente in Columbo, fuerunt inventi_,” _etc._ The identity of Columbum with Kulam or Quilon, on the coast of Malabar (now in Travancore), might therefore have been assumed, but for the doubts which have been raised by some of the editors of Marco Polo as to the position of the _Kulam_ or _Coilon_ of Marco and other medieval travellers. Mr. Hugh Murray, adopting the view of Count Baldello Boni in his edition of Marco Polo, considers that the place so-called by those travellers was on the east coast of the Peninsula. I have not time to seek for Baldello’s edition, and do not know his arguments; but I conceive that there is enough evidence to show that he is wrong. The argument on which Murray rests is chiefly the position in which Polo introduces his description of Coilon, after Maabar, and before Comari; Maabar being with him an extensive region of Coromandel, and Comari doubtless the country about Cape Comorin. But, omitting detailed discussion of the value of this argument, which would involve a consideration of all the other difficulties in reducing to geographical order Polo’s notices of the kingdoms on the coast of India, his description of Coilon as a great port for pepper and brazil-wood, is sufficient to identify it as on the coast of Malabar. The existence of places called Coulan on the east coast in the maps of D’Anville, Rennel, and Milburn, is of little moment, for an inspection of the “Atlas of India” will show scores of places so-called on both sides of Cape Comorin, the word signifying, in the Tamul tongue, ‘an irrigation tank, formed by damming up natural hollows.’ Indeed, though I have found no trace of any well-known port on the east coast so-called, there were at least four ports of the name on the west coast frequented by foreign vessels, viz., Cote Colam, north of Cananore; Colam, called Pandarani, north of Calicut; Cai-Colam, or Kaincolam,[37] between Cochin and the chief place of the name; Coulam, or Quilon, the Columbum of our author. We know that Kulam, on the coast of Malabar, was founded in the ninth century, and that its foundation formed an era from which dates were reckoned in Malabar.[38] In that same century we find[39] that the sailing directions for ships making the China voyage from the Persian Gulf, were to go straight from Maskát to _Kulam Malé_, a place evidently, both from name and fact, on the coast of Malabar. Here there was a custom-house, where ships from China paid their dues.