[5] Marsden, the English translator and annotator of Marco Polo, supposes that Zaitun was the modern Amoy, and Kinsai either Ningpo or Chusan. The Chinese annalists, on the other hand, seem to make the expedition start from Corea, which is much more probable, as that province is separated from Japan by a strait of only about a hundred miles in breadth. It was by this Corean strait that, three hundred years later, the Japanese retorted this invasion.
[6] Marsden remarks upon this date as evidently wrong. Indeed, it is given quite differently in different early editions of the travels. Marsden thinks it should be 1281. This is the date assigned to the invasion by the Chinese books. The older Japanese annals place it in 1284. In the chapter of Marco Polo which follows the one above quoted, and which is mainly devoted to the islands of southeastern Asia, he seems to ascribe to the Japanese the custom of eating their prisoners of war—a mistake which, as his English translator and commentator observes, might easily arise from transferring to them what he had heard of the savage inhabitants of some of the more southern islands.
The Mongol invasion took place in the fourth year of Kōan [A. D. 1281].—K. M.
[7] As this chronicle, which is the oldest Japanese history, is stated to have been originally published A. D. 720, it must be from a continuation of it that Siebold, or rather his assistant, Hoffman, translates.
[A translation by W. G. Aston is published by the Japan Society, London.—Edr.]
[8] This is the equivalent, it is to be supposed, of the Japanese date mentioned in the chronicle.
[9] Hildreth is here too skeptical. All the events mentioned in the text really took place between A. D. 1268 and 1281.—K. M.
[10] Galvano’s book in the translation, published by Hackluyt, in 1601, may be found in the supplement to Hackluyt’s collection of voyages, London, 1811. The original work was printed by the pious care of Francis de Sousa Tauares, to whom Galvano left it, on his death-bed.
[11] See Appendix, Note D.
[12] A Portuguese coin, as corresponding to which in value the Spanish translator of Pinto gives ducats, which, of silver, were about equal to a dollar of our money.