when the junk returns to China the same officials again visit her, and compare the persons found on board with the numbers entered in their register. If anyone is missing the captain is responsible, and must furnish evidence of the death or desertion of the missing individual, or otherwise account for him. If he cannot, he is arrested and punished.
The captain is then obliged to give a detailed report of all the items of the junk's cargo, be their value great or small. Everybody then goes ashore, and the custom-house officers commence an inspection of what everybody has. If they find anything that has been kept back from their knowledge, the junk and all its cargo is forfeited.' This is a kind of oppression that I have seen in no country, infidel or Musulman, except in China. There was, indeed, something analogous to it in India ; for there, if a man was found with anything smuggled he was condemned to pay eleven times the amount of the duty. The Sultan Mahomed abolished this tyrannical rule when he did away with the duties upon merchandise.
When a Musulman trader arrives in a Chinese city, he is allowed to choose whether he will take up his quarters with one of the merchants of his own faith settled in the country, or will go to an inn.2 If he prefers to lodge with a merchant, they count all his money and confide it to the merchant of his choice ; the latter then takes charge of all expenditure on account of the stranger's wants, but acts with perfect integrity. When the guest wishes to depart his money is again counted, and the host is obliged to make good any deficiencies.,
If, however, the foreign trader prefers to go to an inn, his money is made over in deposit to the landlord, who then buys on his account whatever he may require, and if he wishes it procures a slave girl for him. He then establishes him in an apartment opening on the court of the inn, and
1 This is no doubt the practice referred to by Odoric, supra, p. 74.
2 The word is Fandule. See note on Fondacum, supra, p. 355.
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