— 74 — 



The river has two flood-tides every day, 



The marmers and customs, the marriage and burial ceremonies , as 

 well as the language, are all about the same as in Java. 



Formerly, in the periocl Hung-wu (1368 — 1398), a Cantonese called 

 Ch'ên Tsu-i, along with some others, ran away with his whole family to 

 this place, where he set np as a chief, and being of a very bad disposition, 

 he plundered all the merchant ships passing there. In 1407 the government 

 envoy Chêng Ho arrived here with a fleet and another Cantonese, called 

 Shih Chin-ch'ing, came to give information about the wicked intentions of 

 Ch'en Tsu-i; the envoy thereupon took the latter alive and sent him to the 

 capital, where he was punished by death. Shih Chin-ch'ing got a cap and 

 a girdle and was allowed to go back as the chief of Ku-kang and to rale 

 the country; when he died he had no son, so his daughter came in his 

 place and rewards, punishments, destitutions and appointments were all 

 made by her ( I ). 



The products of the country are lignum aloës in different qualities, 

 yellow wax , benzoë and other articles , all of them not found in China. Benzoë 

 looks as if it were inlaid with silver; it has the appearance of dark glue, 

 with white wax inside , the better sorts having much white and little black ; 

 when it is burned the smell is very strong and the natives, as well as the 

 men from Soli ( 2 ), like it very much. 



There is a bird from which the so-called crane-crests are taken ; it is 

 as large as a goose, with black feathers, a long neck and a pointed bill. lts 

 skull is about an inch thick, outside red and inside like yellow wax; it has 

 a very fine appearance and is called crane-crest ( 3 ) ; they use it for the handles 

 and scabbards of their swords and for different other purposes. 



(') This does not quite agree with the account in the History of the Ming dyuasty (v. above 

 p. 72), but the contradiction is only apparent. Shih Chin-ch'iüg was appointed chief of the Chinese 

 at Palembang in 1407 and in the same year he sent his son-in-law to the capital of China , probably 

 because he had no son, or at least not one of sufficiënt age. "When Ma Hwan, the author of the 

 Ying-yai Shêng-lan, visited Palembang, which was before 1416, he found Chin-ch'ing dcad and 

 succeeded by his danghter. This change was not made known to the Chinese court before 1424, when 

 a son of Chin-ch'ing, who either was very young at the time of Ma Hwan's visit, or may have been 

 adopted after that time, had taken his father's place and came to ask the imperial sanction. 



C) We have stated above that Soli was a country somewhere in India (v. pag. 40), and 

 the men from Soli, meant here, probably were the Klings of the present day. 



(") 'j||| T§, This bird is not a cranc, but' the buccros, characterised by a large beak, 



with an cxcrescence on the top of it, which is gcnerally hollow, but solid with somc species; even 

 now it is much used in Canton, where brooches and other ornamenls for the Europcan market are 

 cut out of it. 



