A collector of customs (the Chau Ju-Kua before quoted) of Chinchew, the port in the Amoy district later made famous by Marco Polo, from personal investigation obtained data as to the Philippines which he published in a geography written between 1209 and 1214 (B. Laufer, Relations of Chinese to the Philippines, Washington, 1907, p. 24). Under "Mai," an island north of Borneo, he is supposed to include Western Luzon, and the Island of Mindoro, which Blumentritt thinks (Versuch einer Ethnographie der Philippinen, 65) had the name "Mait," or black, from the former negrito population. The opening description, now held to be of Manila, tells of about a thousand families who occupied both banks of a water-course. Some people wore only waist-cloths while others draped themselves in a sort of cotton sheet, getting presumably much the same effect as may be seen among the feminine bathers on the Tondo beach any Sunday morning. Little bronze idols of unknown origin were to be found in the grassy region outside the village, for Mr. Rockhill is careful to translate "idols" instead of "Buddhas," holding that the word has the more general meaning often. Yet because the later idols of the country were of wood and clay one wonders where bronze idols would be made at that time if not in a Buddhist land. Manila was a peaceable community then, and peaceful too, for the fierce pirates of the south had not yet gotten into the habit of coming there, still less had settled, as they were to do two centuries later. The traders' ships anchored in front of the quarters of the chiefs, to whom they presented the white silk parasols which these dignitaries were accustomed to use. There the market was held, and the shore people at once went on board, mixing in friendly fashion with the newcomers. Nor was there fear of loss, for such then was the Manilans' honesty that even when some one helped himself and took away goods without being seen he could be relied on in due season to faithfully account for them. The period was usually eight or nine months so that, though not travelling the greatest distance, those trading to Manila were among the latest in getting back to China. The trade was without money, a barter of the country's yellow wax (a medium grade), cotton, pearls, tortoise shell, medicinal betel nuts, and native cloth, for imported porcelain, trade gold, iron censers, leads, colored glassbeads and iron needles. Names of other settlements in this region may be what we now call the Babuyanes islands, Polillo island, off the East coast, Lingayen in Pangasinan, Luzon perhaps used of East Luzon and (according to Luther M. Parker, a graduate student in the University of the Philippines, 1913-14) Lian in Batangas.