Excerpt from Notices of Fu-Sang, and Other Countries Lying East of China, in the Pacific Ocean During the Liang dynasty (a. D. 502 it was reported that about seven thousand li to the northeast of Japan there was a coun try whose inhabitants had marks on their bodies such as are on animals. They had three marks on their foreheads. Those whose marks were large and straight belonged to the honorable class, while the lower sort of people had small and crooked marks. It is a custom among this people to collect a great variety of things of a very poor sort to amuse themselves. Those who travel or peddle do not carry any provision with them. They have houses of various kinds, but no walled towns. The palace of the king is adorned with gold, silver, and jewels in a sumptuous manner. The buildings are surrounded with a meat over ten feet broad. When it is filled with quicksilver, and the rain is allowed to flow off from the quicksilver, the water is then regarded in the markets as a precious rarity. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.