Su-lu.
This place has the Shih-i island as a defense. The fields of the island of three years cultivation are lean; they can grow millet and wheat. The people eat shahu (sago), fish, shrimps, and shell fish. The climate is half hot. The customs are simple. Men and women cut their hair, wear a black turban, and a piece of chintze with a minute pattern tied around them. They boil sea-water to make salt, and ferment the juice of the sugar-cane to make spirits. They earn a living by weaving chu pu. They have a ruler. The native products include laka-wood of middling quality, beeswax, tortoise-shell, and pearls. These Su-lu pearls are whiter and rounder than those got at Sha-li-pa-tan (Jurfattan of the Arabs, on Malabar coast), Tisan-kiang (gulf of Manár), and other places. Their price is very high. The Chinese use them for head ornaments. When they are off-color they are classed as “unassorted.” There are some over an inch in diameter. The large pearls from this country fetch up to seven or eight hundred ting. All below this are little pearls. Pearls worth ten thousand taels and upwards, or worth from three or four hundred to a thousand taels, come from the countries of the western Ocean and from Ti-san-kiang (near Ceylon); there are none here (in Su-lu). The goods used in trading here are dark gold, trade silver Pa tu-la cotton cloth, blue beads Chu (choufu) china-ware, pieces of iron, and such like things. Hsi-yang chao-kung tien-lu, 1.20 (Su-lu) says, “this country is in the Eastern Sea. Its trade centre is the island of Shih-ch’i. In 1417 its eastern raja Pa-tu-ko pa-ta-la, its western raja Pa-tu-ko pa-su-li, and its village raja Pa-tu-ko pa-la-pu came with their wives, children, and headmen to court with tribute. Again in 1420 there came a tribute mission from Su-lu. See Rouffaer, op. sup. cit., IV., 391. He gives us the equivalents of these names, Paduka Bohol, Paduka Suli, and Paduka Prabu. Duarte Barbosa, 203, says of the Sulu (Solor) islands that “all around this island the Moros gather much seed pearl and fine pearls of perfect color and not round.”