We have now followed the steps by which the dependants and the neighbours of the ‘Middle Kingdom’ to the North, the East and the South, acquired the essentially Chinese art of the manufacture of porcelain. The next stage in our history brings us at one step to Europe. Before making this stride of more than a thousand leagues from Japan to Central Germany, it will be convenient to bring together some of the scattered references to the porcelain of China that have been laboriously disinterred from the works of the Arab and Christian writers of the Middle Ages, and to compare these statements with the scant account of the trade with Western lands to be found in the Chinese books of that time. We shall then trace rapidly the history of the stages by which the European nations became better acquainted with the porcelain of the Far East so as finally to master the secret of the manufacture. For the earlier period we are dependent almost entirely upon Arab and Chinese sources. The love of the marvellous, the spirit of Sindbad the Sailor, has to be discounted in the first, and we have seen what reservations we have to make in accepting the statements of the latter. There is no doubt that it is in the extraordinary development of trade that followed the wave of Arab conquest in the seventh century that we must find the first possibilities of direct communication with the Far East. The great advance made by China in the early and palmy days of the Tang dynasty (618-907) no doubt opened the way for this intercourse. At that time China was in possession of a civilisation in many respects as advanced as that to be found either at Constantinople or at Bagdad. As early as the year 700 of our era we find mention of a foreign settlement at Canton, so that that town can claim a longer record than any other Chinese port. But it was rather at Khanfu, as the Arabs called Hangchow (or rather its port), the Kinsai of Marco Polo, that, in the time of the next dynasty, the Sung (960-1279), the chief trade was carried on. Thus we find that Edrisi, who wrote a work on geography (_c._ 1153) for Roger, the Norman king of Sicily, is eloquent upon the riches of this port of Khanfu and the neighbouring town Susak (perhaps Suchow), ‘where they make an unequalled kind of porcelain called _ghazar_ by the Chinese.’