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| The Book of Ser Marco Polo : vol.2 |
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Citation Information
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CHAP. LXXXII. THE CITY AND HAVEN OF ZAYTON 2 3 7
was a single man before who learned so much and beheld
so much as he did.
NOTE I.—The Lattru s (or Cinnamon zt»z) Camphora, a large timber tree, grows abundantly in Fo-kien. A description of the manner in which camphor is produced at a very low cost, by sublimation from the chopped twigs, etc., will be found in the Lettres Ea antes, XXIV. 19 segq. ; and more briefly in Hedde by Rondot, p. 35. Fo-kien alone has been known to send to Canton in one year 4000 piculs (of I33 3 lbs. each), but the average is 2500 to 3000 (ib.).
NOTE 2.—When Marco says Zayton is one of the two greatest commercial ports in the world, I know not if he has another haven in his eye, or is only using an idiom of the age. For in like manner Friar Odoric calls Java " the second best of all Islands that exist" ; and Kansan (or Shen-si) the " second best province in the world, and the best populated." But apart from any such idiom, Ibn Batuta pronounces Zayton to be the greatest haven in the world.
Martini relates that when one of the Emperors wanted to make war on Japan, the Province of Fo-kien offered to bridge the interval with their vessels !
ZAYTON, as Martini and Deguignes conjectured, is T'SWAN-CFAU FU, or CHWAN-CHAU FU (written by French scholars Tlzsiouan-tchéou fou), often called in our charts, etc., Chinchew, a famous seaport of Fo-kien about too miles in a straight line S.W. by S. of Fu-chau. Klaproth supposes that the name by which it was known to the Arabs and other Westerns was corrupted from an old Chinese name of the city, given in the Imperial Geography, viz. TSEU-T' U NG. * Zaitún commended itself to Arabian ears, being the Arabic for an olive-tree (whence Jerusalem is called Zaitziniyalz) ; but the corruption (if such it be) must be of very old date, as the city appears to have received its present name in the 7th or 8th century.
Abulfeda, whose Geography was terminated in 1321, had heard the real name of Zayton : "Shanju " he calls it, " known in our time as Zaitún" ; and again : " Zaitún, i.e. Shanju, is a haven of China, and, according to the accounts of merchants who have travelled to those parts, is a city of mark. It is situated on a marine estuary which ships enter from the China Sea. The estuary extends fifteen miles, and there is a river at the head of it. According to some who have seen the place, the tide flows. It is half a day from the sea, and the channel by which ships come up from the sea is of fresh water. It is smaller in size than Ilamath, and has the remains of a wall which was destroyed by the Tartars. The people drink water from the channel, and also from wells."
Friar Odoric (in China, circa 1323-1327, who travelled apparently by land from
Chin-kalán, i.e Canton) says : " Passing through many cities and towns, I carne
to a certain noble city which is called Zayton, where we Friars Minor have two
Houses In this city is great plenty of all things that are needful for human
subsistence. For example, you can get three pounds and eight ounces of sugar for less than half a groat. The city is twice as great as Bologna, and in it are many monasteries of devotees, idol-worshippers every man of them. In one of
those monasteries which I visited there were 3000 monks The place is one
of the best in the world. . . . Thence I passed eastward to a certain city called Fuzo. . . . The city is a mighty fine one, and standeth upon the sea." Andrew of Perugia, another Franciscan, was Bishop of Zayton from 1322, having resided there from 1318. In 1326 he writes a letter home, in which he speaks of the place as " a great city on the shores of the Ocean Sea, which is called in the Persian tongue
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* Dr. C. Douglas objects to this derivation of Zayton, that the place was never called Tseut'ung absolutely, but T'seu-t'ung-thing, " city of prickly T'ung-trees " ; and this not as a name, but 4,5 a polite literary epithet, somewhat like " City of Palaces " applied to Calcutta.
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