1290.

Taking his departure, with a considerable equipment, from a southern port
of China, which he (or his transcriber) named Zaitum, they proceeded to
Ziamba (Tsiampa or Champa, adjoining to the southern part of
Cochin-China) which he had previously visited in 1280, being then in the
service of the emperor Kublai Khan. From thence, he says, to the island
of Java major is a course of fifteen hundred miles, but it is evident
that he speaks of it only from the information of others, and not as an
eyewitness; nor is it probable that the expedition should have deviated
so far from its proper route. He states truly that it is a mart for
spices and much frequented by traders from the southern provinces of
China. He then mentions in succession the small uninhabited islands of
Sondur and Condur (perhaps Pulo Condore); the province of Boeach
otherwise Lochac (apparently Camboja, near to which Condore is situated);
the island of Petan (either Patani or Pahang in the peninsula) the
passage to which, from Boeach, is across a gulf (that of Siam); and the
kingdom called Malaiur in the Italian, and Maletur in the Latin version,
which we can scarcely doubt to be the Malayan kingdom of Singa-Pura, at
the extremity of the peninsula, or Malacca, then beginning to flourish.
It is not however asserted that he touched at all these places, nor does
he seem to speak from personal knowledge until his arrival at Java minor
(as he calls it) or Sumatra. This island, lying in a south-eastern
direction from Petan (if he does not rather mean from Malaiur, the place
last mentioned) he expressly says he visited, and describes it as being
in circumference two thousand miles (not very wide of the truth in a
matter so vague), extending to the southward so far as to render the
Polar Star invisible, and divided into eight kingdoms, two of which he
did not see, and the six others he enumerates as follows: Ferlech, which
I apprehend to be Parlak, at the eastern extremity of the northern coast,