rris's Voyages, vol. i. p. 554.

[602] The Amalfitans are thus described by William of Apulia, apud
Muratori, Dissert. 30.

Urbs haec dives opum, populoque referta videtur,
Nulla magis locuples argento, vestibus, auro.
Partibus innumeris ac plurimus urbe moratur
Nauta, maris coelique vias aperire peritus.
Huc et Alexandri diversa feruntur ab urbe,
Regis et Antiochi. Haec [etiam?] freta plurima transit.
Hic Arabes, Indi, Siculi noscuntur, et Afri.
Haec gens est totum prope nobilitata per orbem,
Et mercanda ferens et amans mercata referre.

[There must be, I suspect, some exaggeration about the commerce and
opulence of Amalfi, in the only age when she possessed any at all. The
city could never have been considerable, as we may judge from its
position immediately under a steep mountain; and what is still more
material, has a very small port. According to our notions of trade, she
could never have enjoyed much; the lines quoted from William of Apulia
are to be taken as a poet's panegyric. It is of course a question of
degree; Amalfi was no doubt a commercial republic to the extent of her
capacity; but those who have ever been on the coast must be aware how
limited that was. At present she has, I believe, no foreign trade at
all. 1848.]

[603] The inhabitants of Acre were noted, in an age not very pure, for
the excess of their vices. In 1291 they plundered some of the subjects
of a neighbouring Mohammedan prince, and, refusing reparation, the city
was besieged and taken by storm. Muratori, ad ann. Gibbon, c. 59.

[604] Villani, 1. vii. c. 144.

[605] Macpherson, p. 490.

[606] Capmany, Memorias Historicas, t. iii. preface, p. 11; and part 2,
p. 131. His authority is Balducci Pegalotti, a Florentine writer upon
commerce about 1340, whose work I have never seen. It appears from
Balducci that the route to China was from Asoph to Astrakan, and thence,
by a variety of places which cannot be found in modern maps, to Cambalu,
probably Pekin, the capital city of China, which he describes as being
one hundred miles in circumference. The journey was of rather more than
eight months, going and returning; and he assures us it was perfectly
secure, not only for caravans, but for a single traveller with a couple
of interpreters and a servant. The Venetians had also a settlement in
the Crimea, and appear, by a passage in Petrarch's letters, to have
possessed some of the trade through Tartary. I