I honoured the monk Sergius as my bishop, because he could speak the language, though he was totally uneducated; and I afterwards learnt, when I came to his own country on my return, that he was no priest, but merely an adventurous weaver. In many things he acted in a way that much displeased me, for he caused to be made for himself a folding chair such as bishops use, and gloves, and a cap of peacocks feathers, with a small gold cross; but I was well pleased with the cross. He had scabbed feet, which he endeavoured to palliate with ointments[3]; was very presumptuous in speech, was present at many of the vain and idolatrous rites of the Nestorians, and had many other vanities with which I was much displeased. Yet we joined his society for die honour of the cross, as he got a banner full of crosses on a cane as long as a lance, and we carried the cross aloft through among all the tents of the Tartars, singing Vexilla regis prodeant, &c. to the great regret of the Mahometans, who were envious of our favour.
[3] This surely was a sinless infirmity, and needed not to have been recorded to his dishonour. He was probably afflicted with chilblains, in consequence of the severity of the Tartarian climate.--E.
I was informed of a certain Armenian who came, as he said, from Jerusalem along with the monk Sergius, carrying a silver cross of about four marks weight, adorned with precious stones, which he presented to Mangu-khan, who asked what was his petition. He represented himself to be the son of an Armenian priest, whose church had been destroyed by the Saracens, and craved his help for rebuilding that church. Being asked how much that might cost, he said two hundred jascots, or two thousand marks; and the khan ordered letters to be given him, ordering those who received the tribute of Persia and the Greater Armenia, to pay him that sum in silver[4]. The monk continued to carry this cross about with him wherever he went, and the Nestorian priests became envious of the profit which he derived from its use.
[4] L. 1500 in weight, equal at least to L. 15,000 of our modern money; a most magnificent present to an itinerant beggar.--E.
SECTION XXXVI.
Account of the Country under the Dominion of the Great Khan of the Manners and Customs of his Subjects; of a Wonderful Piece of Mechanism, constructed by a French Goldsmith; and of the Palace of the Khan at Caracarum.
From the time of our arrival at the court of Mangu-khan, the leskar or camp made only two days journey towards the south; and it then began its progress northwards, in the direction of Caracarum. In the whole of my journey I was convinced of the truth of what I had been informed by Baldwin de Hainault at Constantinople, that the whole way eastwards was by a continual ascent, as all the rivers run from the east towards the west, sometimes deviating towards the north or south, more or less directly, but never running east, but this was farther confirmed to me by the priests who came from Kathay[1]. From the place where I found Mangukhan, it is twenty days journey south-east to Kathay, and ten days journey right east to Oman Kerule, the original country of the Moal and of Zingis[2]. In those parts there are no cities, but the country is inhabited by a people called Su-Moall, or Mongols of the waters, who live upon fish and hunting, and have neither flocks nor herds. Farther north, likewise, there is no city, but a poor people of herdsmen, who are called Kerkis. The Orangin are there also, who bind smooth bones under their feet, and thrust themselves with such velocity over the ice and snow, as to overtake beasts in the chase. There are many other poor nations in those parts, inhabiting as far to the north as the cold will permit, who join on the west with the country of Pascatir, or the Greater Hungary, of which I have made mention before[3]. In the north the mountains are perpetually covered with snow, and the bounds are unknown by reason of the extreme cold. All these nations are poor; yet they must all betake themselves to some employment, as Zingis established a law that none was to be free from service till so old as to be unable for work.
[1] So for as was travelled by Rubruquis, and in the route which he pursued on the north of the Alak mountains, this observation is quite correct to longitude 100° E. But what he here adds respecting Kathay, is directly contradictory to the fact; as all the rivers beyond Caracarum run in an easterly direction. The great central plain of Tangut, then traversed by the imperial horde of the Mongals, and now by the Eluts and Kalkas, must be prodigiously elevated above the level of the ocean.--E.
[2] The information here seems corrupted, or at least is quite incorrect. Kathay or northern China is due east, or east south-east from the great plain to the south of Karakum. Daouria, the original residence of the Mongols of Zingis, between the rivers Onon and Kerlon, is to the north-east.--E.
[3] The Kerkis must fee the Kirguses, a tribe of whom once dwelt to the south-west of lake Baikal. The Orangin or Orangey, inhabited on the east side of that lake. Pascatir is the country of the Bashkirs, Baschkirians, or Pascatirians in Great Bulgaria, called Great Hungary in the text, between the Volga and the Ural.--E.
I was inquisitive about the monstrous men of whom Isidore and Solinus make mention; but no one had ever seen any such, and I therefore doubt whether it be true. Once a priest of Kathay sat by me, clothed in red, of whom I asked how that colour was procured. He told me that on certain high; craggy rocks in the east of Kathay there dwelt certain creatures like men, not above a cubit long, and all hairy, who leapt rather than walked, and dwelt in inaccessible caves. That those who go to hunt them carry strong drink, which they leave in holes of the rocks, and then hide themselves. These little creatures come out from their holes, and having tasted the drink, call out chin-chin, on which multitudes gather together, and drink till they are drunk, and fall asleep. Then the hunters come and bind them, after which they draw a few drops of blood from the veins of the neck of each of these creatures, and let them go free; and this blood is the most precious purple dye. He told me, likewise, that there is a province beyond Kathay, into which, if a man enters, he always continues of the same age at which he entered; but this I do not believe[4].
[4] Rubruquis properly rejects the stories of monstrous men, related by the ancients, yet seems to swallow the absurd story of the purple dye, engrafted by the Kathayan priest on a very natural invention for catching apes. He disbelieves the last information of the priest, which must have been an enigmatical representation of the province of death, or of the tombs.--E.
Kathay is on the ocean, and I was told by the French goldsmith at Caracarum, that there is a people or nation called Tante and Manse, inhabiting certain islands, the sea around which is frozen in winter, so that the Tartars might invade them; but they sent messengers to the great khan, offering a tribute of 2000 tuemen or jascots yearly, to permit them to live in peace[5]. A tuemen, toman, or jascot, is a piece of money equal to ten marks.
[5] It is difficult to guess as to these people and their islands; which may possibly refer to Japan, or even Corea, which is no island. Such tribute could not have been offered by the rude inhabitants of Saghalien or Yesso.--E.
The ordinary money of Kathay is of paper made like pasteboard, the breadth and length of a hand, on which lines are printed, like the seal of Mangu. They write with a pencil like that used by our painters, and in one figure they comprehend many letters, forming one word[6]. The people of Thibet write as we do, and their characters are very like our own. Those of Tangut write from right to left, like the Arabs, and multiply their lines ascending; while the Jugurs write in descending columns. The common money of the Rutenians or Russians, consists in spotted or grizzled furs.
[6] This evidently but obscurely describes the Chinese characters; the most ingenious device ever contrived for the monopoly of knowledge and office to the learned class, and for arresting the progress of knowledge and science at a fixed