Note 400 — Chapter XII
Reading edition
The whole of the native craft of China, above a certain size, are usually described as junks, and the name of this particular description is, comparatively, modern. Charnock and other writers have puzzled themselves to know why they are called soma or sommes. Soma in Portuguese signifies cargo or burthen, and the French have the same meaning, bêtes de somme, beasts of burthen; so that soma or sommes as now applied to these vessels, simply means vessels of large cargo capacity, and is not, as Charnock supposes, a corruption of any Chinese word.