people, giving them vast reverence, and never deceiving them in word or action. They seldom quarrel; and brawls, wounds, or manslaughter, hardly ever occur. Thieves and robbers are no where found, so that their houses and waggons, in which all their treasure is kept, are never locked or barred. If any animal go astray, the finder either leaves it or drives it to those who are appointed to seek for strays, and the owner gets it back without difficulty. They are very courteous; and though victuals are scarce among them, they communicate freely to each other. They are patient under privations; and though they may have fasted for a day or two, will sing and make merry as if they were perfectly satisfied. In journeying, they bear heat and cold with great fortitude. They never fall out; and though often drunk, never quarrel in their cups, No individual despises another; but every one assists his neighbour to the utmost. Having seen here the favourable side of their character, it will be necessary now to consider the reverse. The Tatars, says Carpini, are proud and overbearing to all other people, looking upon foreigners, however noble, with contempt. They are irritable and disdainful towards strangers, and deceitful beyond belief, always speaking fair at first, but afterwards stinging like scorpions. They are crafty and fraudulent, and cheat all men if they can. Drunkenness is honourable among them they are filthy in their meat and drink, and in all their actions. They are importunate beggars, niggardly givers; and, finally, they consider the slaughter of other people as nothing. In consequence of their superstitious traditions, many actions in themselves innocent were accounted criminal, and punished accordingly. To touch or even to approach the fire with a knife or any instrument made of iron, to lean upon a whip, to strike a horse with a bridle, to kill young birds, or to break one bone upon another, were all considered actions of a most unlucky nature. If any one had the misfortune to tread inadvertently on the threshold of one of the great men's houses, he was punished with death. But while they are so scrupulous, observes our friar, with respect to actions in themselves indifferent, they do not consider it a crime to slay men, to invade the territories of others, to take away their goods, and to act contrary to the commands of God: they know nothing of the life to come, or of eternal damnation. “Yet,” he adds, “that they believe in a future state, in which they shall tend flocks, eat, drink, and do the very same things which employ them in this life. They begin every great enterprise at new moon, or when the moon is full: they call the moon the great emperor, and worship that luminary on their knees;" indeed, it is conjectured that Ay, the great ancestor of the Mongol nations, is the same with Ayou the moon. One of The information which Carpini's journal contains relative to the tribes of the Mongols is far from being as complete as his description of their character and customs. He says, that the land of Mongolia was formerly divided among four different tribes or nations. these was the Yeka-Mongol, or the Great Mongols; the second was the tribe of the Su-Mongol, or Water Mongols, who called themselves also Tatars from a river of that name in their territories; the third was named Merkat, and the fourth Metrit. All these resembled each other in figure and complexion, but were divided into distinct provinces under separate princes. The names which Carpini mentions here were evidently not arbitrary inventions; but he appears to have mistaken some petty hordes for the principal tribes of the nation. The enumerations of the Mongolian tribes which occur in the travels of Haitho and of Marco Polo neither agree with one another nor with that offered by our friar. The geographical knowledge of Carpini appears to have been extremely limited, and his descriptions of the countries through which he passed are much involved in error and obscurity. He sometimes even confounds the Black Sea with the Caspian. "The land of Mongolia or Tatary is in the east part of the world," such is his vague language," where the east and north are believed to unite it has the country of Cathay and the people called Solangi on the east ; on the south the country of the Saracens ; the land of the Huini on the south-east ; the province of Maimani on the west, and the ocean on the north. In some parts it is full of mountains, in others quite plain, but every where interspersed with sandy deserts, not a hundredth part of the whole being fertile, as it cannot be cultivated except where it is watered by rivers, which are very rare. Hence there are no towns or cities except one named Cracurim (Caracorum), which is said to be tolerably good; we did not see that place, although within half a day's journey of it when we were at the horde of the Syra, or court of the Great Emperor." In the middle To the south of Cara Cathay (the Black Desert), and south-west of Mongolia, Carpini says there is a vast desert, in which there are said to be certain wild men who are unable to speak, and have no joints in their legs yet they have ingenuity enough to make felt of camels' hair for garments to protect themselves from the weather. The climate of Mongolia is described by him as unequal and tempestuous in the extreme. of summer terrible storms of thunder and lightning occur, by which numbers of people are killed, and even in that season there are occasionally heavy falls of snow, and cold northern winds blow with such violence that a man can hardly sit on horseback. During these gales great clouds of sand are whirled through the atmosphere; and Carpini relates, that one of these storms coming on suddenly at the time of the grand ceremonies at the Syra Horde, he and his companions were obliged to throw themselves prostrate on the ground, every object around them being concealed by the prodigious dust. It never rains in winter, but frequently in summer; yet so gently as scarcely to lay the dust, or to moisten the roots of the parched herbage: but prodigious showers of hail not unfrequently fall, of the violence of which some estimation may be formed from the fact alleged by our author, that while he was at the imperial court, at the time when the emperor elect was about to be placed on the imperial throne, above a hundred and sixty persons were drowned by the sudden melting of one of these showers, and many habitations and much property were swept away. In summer, sudden and intolerable heats are quickly followed by intense cold. 66 Carpini was almost induced to believe that the Chinese were Christians: he mixed together and confounded, perhaps, the exaggerated statements of the Nestorians and the information which he received concerning the doctrines and rites of Shamanism as it exists in China. "The people of Cathay," he says, are pagans, having a peculiar mode of writing, in which they are reported to possess the scriptures of the Old and New Testament. They have also Lives of the Fathers, and houses in which they pray at stated times, built exactly like churches; they are even said to have saints, to worship one God, to venerate the Lord Jesus Christ, and to believe in eternal life; but then they are not baptized: they have no beards, and much resemble the Mongols in features." It is singular that Carpini, while he listened with such easy credulity to the accounts of Christianity in China, should have gathered such an erroneous and imperfect history of the celebrated Christian potentate, Prester John; whose dominions, as far as history can trace them out, were at no great distance from the country which our friar visited. He transports that doubtful character into India, and unites to his mention of him some other singular circumstances. "When Zingis Khan," he relates," had finished the conquest of Cathay or China, he sent one of his sons with an army into India; that prince subdued the people of Lesser India, who are black Saracens, and are also called Ethiopians. The Mongol army then marched against the Christians dwelling in the Greater India; and the king of that country, known by the name of Prester John, came forth with his army to meet them. This Prester John caused a number of hollow copper figures to be made, resembling men, which were stuffed with combustibles and set upon horses, each having a man behind on the horse with a pair of bellows to stir up the fire. At the first onset of the battle, these mounted figures were sent forward to the charge; the men who rode behind them set fire to the combustibles and then blew strongly with the bellows; immediately the Mongol men and horses were burnt with wild-fire, and the air was darkened with smoke. Then the Indians fell upon the Mongols, who were thrown into confusion by this new mode of warfare, and routed them with great slaughter." It is impossible to find the origin of a tale which supposed the existence of a Christian prince in India; but the story related by Carpini, as it will be seen further on, may have been productive of very important consequences. CHAP. IV. TRAVELS OF RUBRUQUIS. RUMOURED CONVERSION OF THE MONGOL PRINCES.-LETTER FROM - THE TARSE. THE papal missions to the Tatars failed wholly in producing the effects expected from them; but they brought |