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The remainder of the day we rested, and on Monday early Roderigo Jerez, Luis Torres and Juan Lepe with Diego Colon and two Cuba men made departure, We had a pack of presents and a letter from the Admiral. For we might meet some administrator or commandant or other, from Quinsai or Zaiton or we knew not where.
They sailed from Zaiton, a seaport of China, and passing along the shores of Tonquin, Java, and farther India, made their way from port to port, through the Bay of Bengal to Ceylon, then to the Malabar coast of India, along which they passed to Cambay, and thence through the Red Sea to Cairo, and so to Venice.
What if over by the sunset there is Ocean-Sea again, true ocean and as many leagues to Asia as to Spain? What if they cannot lead us to Quinsai, Cambaluc or Zaiton, or to the Ganges' mouth, or Aurea Chersonesus, because they never heard of them, and they have no ships to pass again an Ocean-Sea? What if it is all New, and all the maps have to be redrawn?"
Wherever we tarried we found peaceable if vastly excited Indians. But still naked, but still unwise as to gold and spices, traders and markets. Cambalu, Quinsai and Zaiton of the marble bridges!
It was his accounts of "the province of Mangi," the cities of Zaiton and Quinsay, "the Great Khan," "the island of Cipangu," and of their vast wealth and active trade that took special hold on the mind of Columbus.
And as yet we had met no one nor anything that remotely favored golden-roofed Cipango, or famous, rich Quinsai, or Zaiton of the marble bridges. Jerez climbed a tall tree and coming down reported forest and mountain, and naught else. Our companions watched with interest his climbing. "Do you go up trees in heaven?" This morning we had bathed in a pool below the little waterfall.
He meant to discover more, discover further, come if by any means he could to the actual wealth of great, main India; come perhaps to Zaiton, where are more merchants than in all the rest of the world, and a hundred master ships laden with pepper enter every year; or to Quinsai of the marble bridges.
In his reasoning, by some error which cannot be now corrected, a twenty-fourth part, or one hour, is omitted. Paul here evidently speaks of the empire of China, and the port here named Zacton or Zaiton, may be that now called Canton, although spice certainly is not the produce of that country. Cathay seems here to denote northern China. This is obviously the Quinsay of Marco Polo.
Of that great wealth, very little, indeed, ever comes to the Levant: "for one ship load of pepper that goes to Alexandria or elsewhere, destined for Christendom, there come a hundred, aye and more too, to this haven of Zaiton"; while the diamonds "that are brought to our part of the world are only the refuse of the finer and larger stones; for the flower of the diamonds, as well as of the larger pearls, are all carried to the Grand Khan or other princes of these regions: in truth, they possess all the great treasures of the world."
Europeans who saw Zaiton and the other Chinese seaports in after years were wont to say that no one, not even a Venetian, could picture to himself the multitude of trading vessels which sailed upon those eastern seas and crowded into those Chinese harbours. They said also with one accord that Kinsai was without doubt the finest and richest and noblest city in the world.
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