will overwhelm the whole earth from the East to the West. But if we were not strengthened by God, what could we do?'

Very much in the same spirit was the rebuke administered by Mangou Khan to William de Rubruquis. The Mongols,' observed the Khakhan, 'believe there is but one God, and have an upright heart towards Him: That as He hath given to the hand many fingers, so He hath infused into the minds of men various opinions. God hath given the Scriptures to you Christians, but you observe them not. You find it not there that one of you should revile another, or that for money a man ought to deviate from justice. God hath given you Scriptures

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and you keep them not, but He hath given us Soothsayers, whose injunctions we observe, and we live in peace (with one another).'

Carpini, however, was by no means favourably impressed with the uprightness of heart claimed by the Tatar chief as the special attribute of his people. They speake fayre,' he says, in the beginning, but in conclusion they sting like scorpions. For craftie they are, and full of falsehood, circumventing all men whom they are able by their sleights.' Neither was he pleasantly affected by their superstitious objection to personal cleanliness. Their garments were never cleansed, and were worn till they rotted off. When thunder was growling in the distance it was peculiarly unlucky to wash any article whatever, as such an act was likely to dispel the rain-clouds-in other words, water was too precious to be thrown away on external applications.

Notwithstanding the bootless result of the Franciscan Mission, Pope Innocent, in 1247, despatched four Dominican Friars-Ascelin, Simon de St Quintin, Alexander, and Albert -into Persia, but with even less success than had crowned his first venture. At that time a very general belief pervaded Europe that the Tatars, if not actually orthodox Christians,

had a decided leaning towards that religion. It was known that they were not Mohammedans, neither could they be called idolaters any more than the Christians themselves, who bowed down and worshipped graven images as though they had never heard of the Fourth Commandment. De Joinville relates that while Louis IX. was detained at Nicosia in Cyprus, waiting for a fair wind, envoys arrived from the Khan of the Tatars soliciting his co-operation against the Khalif of Baghdad, and avowing themselves of the same faith as the Franks. It has been suggested that the Tatars confounded the Christians with the Bonzas of Tibet, and that the Franks in their turn took their notion of Prester John from the Dalai Lama. Be this as it may, the sainted monarch lent a credulous ear to his visitors from the far East, and sent back a return mission consisting of three Friars and two officers of his household.

A little later, or in the year 1253, Saint Louis despatched William de Rubruquis-a Fleming, whose real name was Ruysbroek of the order of the minorite friers, unto the East parts of the worlde,' because a report had reached his ears that Batou's son, 'the Lord Sartach,' had been converted to Christianity. The Friar, whose simple and picturesque narrative may be read in Hakluyt, and in Astley, started from Constantinople with a little present for the Tatar chief, consisting of 'pleasant fruits, muscatel wine, and delicate bisket bread,' and encountered many adventures on the road, but which, though highly amusing, are foreign to the purport of this compilation. He very soon discovered, however, that the idea of Tatar Christianity was altogether a delusion, which he largely ascribed to the proneness of the Nestorian Christians to spin out a most wonderful story from the merest trifle. When he was about to return to Europe, a Mongol officer begged him not to say that our master is a Christian: he is no Christian but a Mongol;' and he adds that these barbarians fancied that the

word Christian was simply the name of a tribe, or race. But the general reader will turn most readily to the Friar's quaint descriptions of the manners and customs of the Tatars.

'They have,' he says, 'in no place any settled citie to abide in, neither knowe they of the celestiall citie to come. They have divided all Seythia among themselves, which stretched from the river Danubius even unto the rising of the sunne. And every of their captaines, according to the great or small number of his people, knoweth the bounds of his pastures, and where he ought to feed his cattel winter and summer, spring and autumne. For in the winter they descend unto the warm regions southward. And in the summer they ascend unto the colde regions northward. In winter when snow lyeth upon the grounds they feede their cattel upon pastures without water, because they use snow instead of water.

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'Their houses wherein they sleepe, they grounde upon a round foundation of wickers artifically wrought and compacted together the roofe whereof consisteth (in like sorte) of wickers meeting above into one little roundell, out of which roundell ascendeth upward a necke like unto a chimney, which they cover with white felte, and oftentimes they lay morter or white earth upon the sayd felte, with the powder of bones, that it may shine white. And sometimes also they cover it with blacke felte. The sayd felte on the necke of their house they doe garnish over with beautifull varieties of pictures. Before the doore, likewise, they hang a felte curiously painted over. For they spend all their coloured felte in painting vines, trees, birds and beastes thereupon. The sayd houses they make so large that they conteine 30 foote in breadth. For measuring once the breadth between the wheele-ruts of one of their cartes, I found it to be 20 feete over; and when the house was upon the carte, it stretched over the wheeles on each side five feete at the least. I told 22 oxen in one teame, drawing an house upon a cart,

eleven in one order according to the breadth of the cart, and eleven more before them; the axle-tree of the carte was of an huge bignes like unto the mast of a ship. And a fellow stood in the doore of the house, upon the fore-stall of the carte, driving forth the oxen.

'Moreover, they make certaine four-square baskets of small slender wickers as big as great chestes: and afterward, from one side to another, they frame an hollow lidde, or cover, of such like wickers, and make a doore in the foreside thereof. And then they cover the sayd chest or little house with black felt rubbed over with tallow or sheep's milke to keep the raine from soaking through, which they decke likewise with painting or with feathers. And in such chests they put their whole houshold stuffe and treasure. Also the same chests they do strongly binde upon their carts, which are drawen with camels, to the end they may wade through rivers. Neither do they at any time take down the sayd chests from off their carts. When they take down their dwelling-houses they turne the doores always to the south: and next of all they place the carts laden with their chests, here and there, within half a stone's cast of the house insomuch that the house standeth between two ranks of carts, as it were between two wals. The matrons make for themselves most beautiful carts, which I am not able to describe unto your majestie but by pictures onlie.

'Duke Baatu hath sixteen wives, every one of which hath one great house besides other little houses, which they place behind the great one, being as it were chambers for their maidens to dwel in. When they take their houses from off the cartes, the principal wife placeth her court on the west frontier, and so all the rest in their order: so that the last wife dwelleth upon the east frontier: and one of the said ladies' courts is distant from another about a stone's cast. Whereupon the court of one

rich Moal or Tartar will appeare like unto a great village, very

few men abiding on the same. One woman will guide 20 or 30 cartes at once, for their countries are very plaine, and they binde the cartes with camels or oxen one behind another. And there sittes a wench (muliercula) in the foremost carte driving the oxen, and al the residue follow on a like pace. When they chance to come at any bad passage, they let them loose and guide them over one by one: for they goe a slowe pace, as fast as a lambe or an oxe can walke.'

Here follows a picture of a Tatar interior. When they have taken down their houses from their carts and turned the doors southward, they place the bed of the master of the house at the north part thereof; the women's place is always on the east, that is, on the left hand of the master of the house, when sitting upon his bed with his face to the south, but the men's place is to the west, that is, to the right hand of the master. Men, when they enter into the house, never hang their quivers on the women's side. Over the master's head there is an image made of felt, which they call the master's brother, and another over the head of the mistress, which is called her brother, fastened to the wall, and a bow between both of them. There is a little lean idol which is, as it were, the guardian of the whole house. The mistress of the house places at the feet of her bed, on the right hand, the skin of a kid stuffed with wool, and near that a little image, looking towards the apartment of the women. Next the door on the woman's side there is another image, with a cow's udder, which is the guardian of the women that milk the cattle, for this is the constant employment of their On the other side of the door, next the men, is another image, with the udder of a mare, for the guardian of those who milk the mares.'

women.

The chief drink of the Tatars was a fermented liquor made from mares' milk, called by Rubruquis 'Cosmos,' by Jonas Hanway Kumeese,' and by later writers Kumiz.' The