- E. [17] In The Manufacture Of Sugar It Is Necessary To Neutralize A Certain Redundant Acid In The Juice Of The Cane, By A Fit Proportion Of Some Alkaline Ingredient To Enable The Sugar To Crystallize:

The ordinary temper, as it is called, for this purpose, in the West Indies, is lime, but any alkali will produce nearly the same effect.

This subject will be fully elucidated in that part of our work which is peculiarly appropriated to the sugar colonies in the West Indies, - E.

[18] There can hardly be a doubt that the Zaiturn of Marco is the modern Canton; yet from the causes already mentioned in several notes, it is next to an impossibility to trace the route or itinerary from Quinsai to this place. - E.

[19] This is an obvious error, corruption, or interpolation; for on no conceivable hypothesis of the situations of Quinsai and Zaitum, can any river be found in China which answers to this description. - E.

[20] This is the only hint in Marco, of the peculiarly famous manufacture of China, from which all the best earthen ware of Europe has acquired this name as par excellence. From this circumstance, and from the fame of Nankin for this manufacture, I strongly suspect that this passage has been foisted in by some ignorant or careless editor in a wrong place. - E.

[21] It is singular that Marco should make no mention whatever of the peculiar beverage of the Chinese, tea, though particularly described both in name and use, by the Mahometan travellers in the ninth century, four hundred years earlier, as used in all the cities of China. - E.

SECTION XVII

Of the island of Zipangu, and of the unsuccessful attempts made by the Tartars for its Conquest.

I shall now leave the country of Mangi, and proceed to discourse of India the greater, the middle, and lesser; in which I have been, both in the service of the great khan, and also on our return home along with the queen, who was sent from Kathay to Argon. The ships which are built in the kingdom of Mangi are made of fir, having only one deck, on which are built twenty cabins, more or less, according to their size, each for one merchant. They have each a good rudder, and four masts, with four sails, which they raise or let down at pleasure, but some have only two masts. Some of the largest ships have thirteen divisions in the inside, made of boards let into each other, so that if, by the blow of a whale, or by touching on a rock, water should get into one of these divisions, it can go no farther, and the leak being found, is soon stopped. They are all built double, or have two courses of boards, one within the other, both of which are well caulked with oakum, and nailed with iron; but they are not pitched, as they have no pitch in Mangi, instead of which they are payed all over with the oil of a certain tree, mixed up with lime and chopped hemp which binds faster than pitch or lime.

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