Passing out from the mouth of the "Dragon," he found the sea running westward and the wind gentle.

He notices that the waters are swept westward as the trade winds are.

In this way he accounts for there being so many islands in that part of the earth, the mainland having been eaten away by the constant flow of the waves.

He thinks their very shape indicates this, they being narrow from north to south and longer from east to west.

Although some of the islands differ in this, special reasons maybe given for the difference.