— 115 — 



people of the country asserted that he had been unjustly prosecuted, the 

 queen feit great remorse; she caused his daughter to be strangled and made 

 his son an officer. 



Since this time, though they did not bring any more tribute, the 

 intercourse by traders was unintermpted. 



The country consists of fourteen different places , and is situated at the 

 east of Palembang; from Champa one can arrive there in forty days (*). 



The customs and products of the country have been described in the 

 history of the Sung dynasty. 



The above account shows that the relations between China and the Western 

 Coast of Borneo have been rather intimate at one time, but nevertheless the de- 

 scription of the country is very hazy and gives us no clue for determining the locality. 

 The Chinese have been puzzled by it too and have frequently confounded it with Ta-ni 

 (Patani on the coast of Malacca); we saw our author make this mistake just now and 

 we find the same error committed in the Tung Hsi Yang K'au, where the accounts 

 of these two countries are hopelessly mixed together. 



The last country we have to treat of under the head of Borneo are the 



Karimata-islands. 



Hsing-ch'a Shêng-lan (1436). 



Karimata ( 2 ) lies opposite to Kau-lan (Billiton) ; it is an island in the 

 sea and has a long range of mountains. They use the water from the mount- 

 ains to irrigate their fields, but their rice is not very abundant. 



The weather is always warm. Their manners and customs are rather 

 bad. The men shave their heads , wear a short jacket of bamboo-cloth and a 

 kilted sarong. They plant bananas and eat the fruit instead of rice. They 

 make salt out of seawater and wine from the sugar-cane. 



Products of the country are tortoise-shell and antelopes. Articles of 

 import are Java-cloth, glass-beads, calico printed with flowers, rice, etc. 



C) We here omit a few details applying to Patani on the coast of Malacca, which place 

 is confounded with the subject of this article. This mistake is owing to the peculiar liberties the 

 Chinese take in writing the names of places. They like to reduce them to one syllable and accord- 

 ingly they often wiïte Fa instead of Ka-la-pa (Batavia), Lat instead of Si-lat (Singapore), Ni instead 

 of Pu-ni. Patani is called Ta-ni by them, but as the character used for the transcription of the 

 syllable Ta, has originally the meaning of great, the author has taken it in the latter sense and 

 read Great Ni, which he considered identical with Pu-ni. 



O j|x. J|ï ^Bp ~J~ Ka-ri-ma-tang; the text has Ka-ma-ri-tang, but this is evidently 

 a mistake. The islands are mentioned in the History of the Yuan dynasty under the name of 



H* SL «B§ ^ Ka=ri - ma=ta ( v - p. 26). 



8* 



