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-CHAU FU, or
CHWAN-CHAU FU (written by French scholars Thsiouan-tcheou-fou), often
called in our charts, etc., Chinchew, a famous seaport of Fo-kien about
100 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'UNG.[1] Zaitun commended itself to Arabian ears,
being the Arabic for an olive-tree (whence Jerusalem is called
Zaituniyah); 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.
