in particular, this
may be fairly presumed to refer to the Straits of Malacca.

EDRISI.

Edrisi, improperly called the Nubian geographer, who dedicated his work
to Roger, King of Sicily, in the middle of the twelfth century, describes
the same island, in the first climate, by the name of Al-Rami; but the
particulars so nearly correspond with those given by the Arabian
traveller as to show that the one account was borrowed from the other. He
very erroneously however makes the distance between Sarandib and that
island to be no more than three days' sail instead of fifteen. The island
of Soborma, which he places in the same climate, is evidently Borneo, and
the two passages leading to it are the Straits of Malacca and of Sunda.
What is mentioned of Sumandar, in the second climate, has no relation
whatever to Sumatra, although from the name we are led to expect it.

MARCO POLO.

Marco Polo, the celebrated Venetian traveller of the thirteenth century,
is the first European who speaks of this island, but under the
appellation of Java minor, which he gave to it by a sort of analogy,
having forgotten, or not having learned from the natives, its appropriate
name. His relation, though for a long time undervalued, and by many
considered as a romantic tale, and liable as it is to the charge of
errors and omissions, with some improbabilities, possesses,
notwithstanding, strong internal evidence of genuineness and good faith.
Containing few dates, the exact period of his visit to Sumatra cannot be
ascertained, but as he returned to Venice in 1295, and possibly five
years might have elapsed in his subsequent tedious voyages and journeys
by Ceylon, the Karnatick, Malabar, Guzerat, Persia, the shores of the
Caspian and Euxine, to Genoa (in a prison at which place he is said to
have dictated his narrative), we may venture to refer it to the year
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