164 COMMERCE WITH voyage, described as so distant and so dangerous, is now performed by a Chinese junk, navigating by the compass, in fifteen days. It may be further remarked, that the circum- stances of the voyage made by the fleet which the Emperor Kuhlai sent for the conquest of Borneo or Java, prove the very same thing. It sailed from one of the very ports of Fo-ldcn from which the junks sail at this day, and took sixty-eight days to reach its destination, making, like Marco Polo and his fleet, a coasting voyage of it, sailing along the shores of Tonquin and Cochin China. * In the native annals of the Indian islanders, the first distinct mention made of the Chinese is a no- tice that they came to trade in cloves at Ternaiiy one of the spice islands, in the reign of Marhum^ king of that island, whose reign commenced in 14(J5. The wife of the last monarch of the Budd- hist religion in Java is, in the annals of that island, expressly stated to have been a Chinese. Tliat mo- narch lost his kingdom and his life in 1478, so that these two transactions accord very nearly in date. From the Javanese annals of the same period, we glean that there was some intercourse between Java and Champa and Kamboja, in the route from China by the coasting voyage. It is remarkable that the Arabs are expressly mentioned as having ♦ HUioire des Huns, Liv. Q, p. 186.
