A voyage of eleven days from Tenasserim brought our travellers to the "city of Banghella." In my annotations on the text (p. 210,) I have inferred that this place was the ancient Gour on the Ganges; but the following judicious remarks, which Colonel Yule has been good enough to transmit to me, lead me to doubt the accuracy of that identification. He observes:-"I think it is to be deduced from what Varthema says, that the city of Banghella' was a seaport, and therefore could not be Gour. In an old Dutch Latin geography book, which I have chanced on in the salle of this hotel, (Hotel Royal, Genoa,) with wonderfully good maps, by J. and C. Blaen, (no title; date about 1640, as Charles I. is spoken of as reigning,) I find Bengala put down as a town close and opposite to Chatigam (Chittagong.) I don't lay much stress on this; but I suspect it was either Chittagong, or Satgong on the Hoogly, which was the great port one hundred years later, and also in Ibn Batûta's time." By Satgong I presume the Colonel indicates Ibn Batûta's Sâdkáwân, which the latter describes as "the first town he entered," [in Bengal,] and as being "large and situated on the sea-shore." But the following quotation from Patavino, whose work was published in 1597, seems to upset my friend's deduction as well as my own; for it also describes Bengala as a town distinct from either Gour, or Chittagong, or Satgong. He writes:“GOVRO vrbs Regia habitatio fuit, et BENGALA urbs quæ regioni nomen dat, inter vniversæ Indiæ

1 LEE's Translation, p. 194.

præclarissimas connumeratur. Præter has iuxta maris ripam ad ostia Chaberis insignia emporia Catigan et Satigan iacent, quæ centum propemodum leucis ab invicem distant." I find, moreover, on further investigation, that Rennell likewise recognizes Satgong and Banghella as distinct towns, and gives some clue towards determining the position of the latter. The former he describes as follows:-"Satgong or Satagong, now an inconsiderable village on a small creek of the Hoogly river, about four miles to the northwest of Hoogly, was, in 1566, and probably later, a large commercial city, in which the European traders had their factories in Bengal. At that time, Satgong river was capable of bearing small vessels; and I suspect, that its then course, after passing Satgong, was by way of Adaumpour, Omptah, and Tamlook; and that the river called the Old Ganges was a part of its course, and received that name while the circumstance of the change was fresh in the memory of the people. The appearance of the country between Satgong and Tamlook countenances such an opinion." Of the other place, which seems to be Varthema's Banghella, he says: "In some ancient maps, and books of travel, we meet with a city named Bangella; but no traces of such a place now exist. It is described as being near the eastern mouth of the Ganges,2 and I conceive that the site of it has been

1 Geog. Univ. tum Vet. tum Novæ absolutissimum opus, p. 258. 2 It is so placed in several of the old maps belonging to the British Museum. For some further notes on this subject, the reader is referred to the Postscript at the end of this Introduction.

g

carried away by the river, as in my remembrance a vast tract of land has disappeared thereabouts. Bengalla appears to have been in existence during the early part of the last century."

To return from this digression: Varthema represents Banghella as one of the finest cities he had hitherto seen. The Sultan was a Muhammedan, and had a standing army of 20,000 men. Here they found the richest merchants they had ever met; the principal exports were cotton and silk stuffs, which were woven by men and not by women; the country abounded in grain of every kind, sugar, ginger, and cotton, and was, withal, the best place in the world to live in. In this latter particular, our author's statement is corroborated by the experience of Ibn Batûta nearly two centuries before, who says: "I never saw a country in which provisions were so cheap. I there saw one of the religious of the West, who told me that he had bought provisions for himself and family for a whole year with eight dirhems,"2 or about twenty-four shillings of our money !

At Banghella our adventurers met two Christians from the city of Sarnau in Cathay, a place which I was unable to identify when writing the notes, but for which I have since discovered, what appears to me, a very probable representative in one of the letters of Fra Odorico (A.D. 1318), who, in his account of "Catay," speaks of Christians inhabiting that

1 Memoir of a Map of Hindoostan, p. 57.

2 LEE'S Translation, p. 194.

province in considerable numbers, and mentions that of the 4,009 doctors who attended on the "Gran Cane," eight were Christians. He then adds:

During the winter, this lord resides at Cabalec, [Kanbalù Pekin,] but at the beginning of summer he leaves it to take up his abode in a city called north, a very cold lo

Sanay, situated towards the cality and habitation, and in removing from the one place to the other, he goes in wonderful state."1 This quotation is from the narrative which Fra Guglielmo di Solona professes to have taken down from Fra Odorico's own lips, at Padua, in the year 1330. In the other account, which is also preserved by Ramusio, and which appears to have been written by the missionary Friar himself, this summer-palace of the Great Khân is called Sandoy; but the names of the same places are so differently spelt in the two exemplars as frequently to defy identification without the aid of the accompanying narrative. In this instance, there can be no doubt that Sanay and Sandoy represent one and the same locality; and although it is beyond me to decide which is the more correct orthography, I deem it tolerably certain that the place so called was identical with Varthema's "city of Sarnau."

There is so much interesting matter in these early travels of Fra Odorico, that it is to be hoped some competent hand will prepare an annotated translation of them for the HAKLUYT SOCIETY. A striking feature in the two narratives, which evidently de1 RAMUSIO, vol. ii. p.

251.

scribe the same journey, is that one of them, viz., that written by Fra Guglielmo, contains an account of several places on the western coast of India between Thana (Tanna) and Cape Comorin, including Alandrina (Fandaraina-Pandarani ?) and Mebor (Malabar,) and also of Sumoltra (Sumatra?) and Iana (probably for Taua=Java?) as far as Hicunera, a large island in the ocean towards the south about 2,000 miles in circuit, from whence the traveller proceeds to Silam, (Ceylon,) then to Dadin, an island one day distant, and next, after a navigation of many days, to Manzi on the frontiers of China; whereas, in the other exemplar, most of these intermediate places are omitted, and the writer goes direct from Tana (Tanna) to Nicoverra, and then to Mangi by Diddi. Whence this discrepancy? Was the additional matter an interpolation of a later date? The subject deserves a thorough investigation.

The two Sarnau Christians whom our travellers encountered at Banghella had evidently come to that part of India for trading purposes, and as Varthema describes them as writing from right to left, they were probably Nestorians. On seeing the branches of coral which Cogiazenor had for sale, they advised him to accompany them to Pegu, as being the most eligible market for such articles; and the party accordingly set off together on a voyage of "about one thousand miles," during which they "passed a gulf

1 It is somewhat strange that Varthema should make the distance between his Banghella and Pegu three hundred miles more than he interposes between Tenasserim and Banghella. See pp. 213, 214.