244 Boundaries and Beyond
Malacca.^6 The βirst contacts of the Portuguese with China proper were
made by individual merchant-adventurers who sailed for the South China
coast from Malacca aboard native junks. The earliest mention of such a
visit is by the Italian Andrea Corsali, who, in his letter to Duke Giuliano de
Media dated January 6, 1515, says:
The merchants of the land of China also make voyages to Malacca
across the Great Gulf to get cargoes of spices, and bring from their
own country musk, rhubarb, pearls, tin, porcelain, and silk and
wrought stuffs of all kinds, such as damasks, satins, and brocades
of extraordinary richness.... During this last year some of our
Portuguese made a voyage to China. They were not permitted to
land; for they say ‘tis against their custom to let foreigners enter
their dwellings. But they sold their goods at a great gain, and they
say there is as great proβit in taking spices to China as in taking
them to Portugal; for ‘tis a cold country and they make great use
of them.^7Giovanni da Empoli, another Italian, then in the Portuguese service, who
wrote from Cochin on November 15, 1515, mentions the pioneer voyage
again:
The country abounds with all βine white silk, and it costs thirty
cruzados the cantaro; damasks of sixteen good pieces, at βive
hundred reals the piece; satins, brocades, musk at half a ducat
the ounce, and less. Many pearls of all sorts in great abundance;
and many caps, so that from there to here there is made on them
a proβit of thirty to one. The ships bring spices from [to] there; so
that every year there come from Zamatra [Sumatra] some sixty
thousand cantara of pepper; and from Coccin and the land of
Mallibari βifteen to twenty thousand cantara of pepper along; it is
worth βifteen to twenty ducats the cantaro. In like manner, ginger,
mace, nutmeg, incense, aloes, velvet, our gold thread, coral, woolen
clothes, robes. There come from there somedrom (?), cloths like
ours, much white alum and good vermilions.... Everything is sold
by weight. They have many grains: the great things are so many
that come from there.^8- C.R. Boxer, South China in the Sixteenth Century (reproduced from the Hakluyt
Society; Nendeln: Kraus Reprint Ltd., 1967), p. xix. - Quoted in T.T. Chang, Sino-Portuguese Trade from 1514 to 1644 (Leiden: Late E.J.
Brill Ltd., 1934), p. 36. - Quoted in ibid., pp. 36‒7.
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