There are no pirates from this country; the inhabitants are good people, and live by their trade and manufactures.

NOTE 1.—­CAMBAET is nearer the genuine name of the city than our CAMBAY.  Its proper Hindu name was, according to Colonel Tod, Khambavati, “the City of the Pillar.”  The inhabitants write it Kambayat.  The ancient city is 3 miles from the existing Cambay, and is now overgrown with jungle.  It is spoken of as a flourishing place by Mas’udi, who visited it in A.D. 915.  Ibn Batuta speaks of it also as a very fine city, remarkable for the elegance and solidity of its mosques, and houses built by wealthy foreign merchants. Cambeth is mentioned by Polo’s contemporary Marino Sanudo, as one of the two chief Ocean Ports of India; and in the 15th century Conti calls it 14 miles in circuit.  It was still in high prosperity in the early part of the 16th century, abounding in commerce and luxury, and one of the greatest Indian marts.  Its trade continued considerable in the time of Federici, towards the end of that century; but it has now long disappeared, the local part of it being transferred to Gogo and other ports having deeper water.  Its chief or sole industry now is in the preparation of ornamental objects from agates, cornelians, and the like.

The Indigo of Cambay was long a staple export, and is mentioned by Conti, Nikitin, Santo Stefano, Federici, Linschoten, and Abu’l Fazl.

The independence of Cambay ceased a few years after Polo’s visit; for it was taken in the end of the century by the armies of Alauddin Khilji of Delhi, a king whose name survived in Guzerat down to our own day as Alauddin Khuni—­Bloody Alauddin. (Ras Mala, I. 235.)

CHAPTER XXIX.

CONCERNING THE KINGDOM OF SEMENAT.

Semenat is a great kingdom towards the west.  The people are Idolaters, and have a king and a language of their own, and pay tribute to nobody.  They are not corsairs, but live by trade and industry as honest people ought.  It is a place of very great trade.  They are forsooth cruel Idolaters. [NOTE 1]

[Illustration:  ‘The Gates of Somnath,’ preserved in the British Arsenal at Agra, from a photograph (converted into elevation)]

NOTE 1.—­SOMNATH is the site of the celebrated Temple on the coast of Saurashtra, or Peninsular Guzerat, plundered by Mahmud of Ghazni on his sixteenth expedition to India (A.D. 1023).  The term “great kingdom” is part of Polo’s formula.  But the place was at this time of some importance as a commercial port, and much visited by the ships of Aden, as Abulfeda tells us.  At an earlier date Albiruni speaks of it both as the seat of a great Mahadeo much frequented by Hindu pilgrims, and as a port of call for vessels on their way from Sofala in Africa to China,—­a remarkable incidental notice of departed trade and civilisation!  He does not give Somnath so good a character as Polo does; for he names it as one of the chief pirate-haunts.  And Colonel Tod mentions that the sculptured memorial stones on this coast frequently exhibit the deceased as a pirate in the act of boarding.  In fact, piratical habits continued in the islands off the coast of Kattiawar down to our own day.