Asia -- Description and travel -- Early works to 1800; Mongols -- History; Polo, Marco, 1254-1323?; Voyages and travels
When the Portuguese, in the 16th century, recovered China to
European knowledge, Zayton was no longer the great haven of foreign
trade; but yet the old name was not extinct among the mariners of
Western Asia. Giovanni d’Empoli, in 1515, writing about China from
Cochin, says: “Ships carry spices thither from these parts. Every
year there go thither from Sumatra 60,000 cantars of pepper, and
15,000 or 20,000 from Cochin and Malabar, worth 15 to 20 ducats a
cantar; besides ginger (?), mace, nutmegs, incense, aloes, velvet,
European goldwire, coral, woollens, etc. The Grand Can is the King
of China, and he dwells at ZEITON.” Giovanni hoped to get to Zeiton
before he died.[2]
The port of T’swan-chau is generally called in our modern charts
_Chinchew_. Now _Chincheo_ is the name given by the old Portuguese
navigators to the coast of Fo-kien, as well as to the port which
they frequented there, and till recently I supposed this to be
T’swan-chau. But Mr. Phillips, in his paper alluded to at p.
232, asserted that by _Chincheo_ modern Spaniards and Portuguese
designated (not T’swan-chau but) _Chang-chau_, a great city 60
miles W.S.W. of T’swan-chau, on a river entering Amoy Harbour. On
turning, with this hint, to the old maps of the 17th century, I
found that their Chincheo is really Chang-chau. But Mr. Phillips
also maintains that Chang-chau, or rather its port, a place
formerly called Gehkong and now Haiteng, is _Zayton_. Mr. Phillips
does not adduce any precise evidence to show that this place was
known as a port in Mongol times, far less that it was known as
the most famous haven in the world; nor was I able to attach great
weight to the arguments which he adduced. But his thesis, or a
modification of it, has been taken up and maintained with more
force, as already intimated, by the Rev. Dr. Douglas.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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