clouded by that time, or his ghostwriter was more imaginative than he was. Some suggest that he did not visit this part of China at all. Nevertheless, he was impressed with Quanzhou(Zaiton), two hundred kilometres to the south of Fuzhou and, according to Marco Polo, fifteen miles from Guangzhou. He claims to have visited Quanzhou, after leaving Fuzhou and making a detour that takes in Guilin and Guangzhou. He found to be Quanzhou a bustling port, was impressed by the quantity of pepper imports, and noted that sugar was produced. "There is a remarkable passage by Rustichello of Pisa, the "as-told-to" author of The Travels of Marco Polo, that appears to have escaped the attention of Jewish historians altogether. It tells how, when Messer Maffeo, Marco's uncle, and Messer Marco himself were in the city of Fu-Chau, there was in their company a certain Saracen who spoke to them as follows: "In such-and-such a place there is a community whose religion nobody knows. It is evidently not idolatrous, since they keep no idols. They do not worship fire. They do not profess Mahomet. And they do not appear to observe the Christian order. I suggest that we should go and have a talk with them. "Marco Polo and his uncle did just that. At first, writes Rustichello, the members of this mysterious community were reluctant to talk, for they were afraid that their visitors had been sent by the Great Khan to make this investigation in order to get them into trouble. But Maffeo and Marco attended the place regularly day after day, familiarizing themselves with these people and inquiring about their affairs. They discovered that they did indeed hold the Christian faith. For they possessed books, and Maffeo and Marco, poring over them, began to interpret the writing. Translating it word by word from one language to another, till they found that they were the words of the Psalter. They inquired from what source they had received their faith and their rule; and their informants replied: "From our forefathers." It came out that they had in a certain temple of their three pictures representing three apostles of the seventy who went through the world, preaching. They declared that it was these three who had instructed their ancestors in this faith long ago, and that it had been preserved among them for 700 years. For a long time, they had