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upon the northern borders of the modern Acheh, Polo tells us that the natives called themselves the subjects of the Great Kaan, that they cultivated brasil, and had "plenty of camphor and all sorts of spices." He also relates that there were here men with tails, "a palm in length," hairless, and "about the thickness of a dog's,"—a very popular fable of the Archipelago which is still current among the natives in many places even in our own time.

Polo's remarks on the subject of the Sumatran States have been examined in some detail, not because they have much intrinsic importance, but because they can claim a certain interest as being the first notes ever made by a European upon the condition of an island of the Malayan Archipelago. Of geographical data little indeed is to be won from a perusal of Messer Marco's book, his itinerary showing, what we already knew, that the sea-route from China via southeastern Asia had become a great highway of commerce, and that certain ports of call, known to the Arabs centuries earlier, were still used to the exclusion of all others at the end of the thirteenth century. For the rest we learn that the trade in the distinctive products of the Malayan Archipelago was flourishing in 1296, as it had been, in all probability, before the days of Ptolemy; that the ubiquitous Arab merchants had already established colonies and begun the conversion of the Malays to Muhammadanism on the east coast of Sumatra; and that cannibalism was a marked feature in the customs of the pagan people of the island. All this adds little to the story of explora-