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, they made their way to the southern outlet of the Straits of Malacca, halted at the island of Bentan to take in fuel and water, or for similar purposes at an island of the Natuna group, came to port once more at some harbour either of the eastern shores of the Malay Peninsula, Siam or Kambodia, passed on to Champa, and thence to Zayton or some other port of the southern provinces of China. It will be noted that the route thus traced is practically identical with that over which we have supposed the sailor Alexander to have journeyed, and in a later chapter we shall find that a precisely similar course was followed by all the medieval travellers to and from China of whose wanderings we have a record. The sea-route via southeastern Asia had by this time become a well-beaten track, but certain ports of call were used to the exclusion of all others, and the primary value of this great highway was as a means of getting to and from China, few wanderers being tempted to stray from the appointed path which custom had marked out for ships plying in these waters.

The establishment of important commercial colonies in China by the Arabs and the Persians, concerning which Abu Zaid Hassan's portion of the manuscript furnishes some interesting particulars, presupposes that the passage to the Celestial Empire via the Straits of Malacca and the China Sea was now made by these people with great frequency, and the ports of call along that route, which seem to have been practically the same from the time of Marinus of Tyre to that of Ibn Batuta who returned from his wanderings in 1347, were also to some