one or other of the Levantine ports. Europeans who saw Zaiton
and the other Chinese seaports in after years were wont to
say that no one, not even a Venetian, could picture to
himself the multitude of trading vessels which sailed upon
those eastern seas and crowded into those Chinese harbours.
They said also with one accord that Kinsai was without doubt
the finest and richest and noblest city in the world. To the
men of Kinsai, Venice would have been a little suburb and the
Levant a backyard. The whole of the east was their trading
field, and their wealth and civilization were already old
when Venice was a handful of mud huts peopled by fishermen.

[Footnote C: Mansi or Manji was southern China and Cathay was
northern China, the boundary between them lying along the
River Hoang-Ho on the east and the southern boundary of
Shensi on the west.]

Nor was Kinsai alone and unmatched in all its wonder and
beauty, for a three days' journey from it stood Sugui, which
today we call Suchow, lying also on the great canal, with its
circumference of twenty miles, its prodigious multitudes
swarming the streets, its physicians, philosophers, and
magicians; Sugui, with the ginger which was so common that
forty pounds of it might be bought for the price of a
Venetian silver groat, the silk which was manufactured in
such vast quantities that all the citizens were dressed in it
and still ships laden with it sailed away; Sugui under whose
jurisdiction were sixteen wealthy cities, where trade and the
arts flourished. If you had not seen Hangchow, you would have
said that there was no city in the world, not Venice nor