Sent Friar Asceline Of The Order Of
Friars Predicants, With Three Other Friars From Different Convents, With
Apostolical Letters To
The army of the Tartars, exhorting them to desist
from slaughtering mankind, and to adopt the true Christian faith; and
From
one of these lately returned, Friar Simon de St Quintin, of the minorite
order, I have received the relations concerning the transactions of the
Tartars, which are here set down. At the same period, Friar, John de Plano
Carpini of the order of minorites, with some others, was sent to the
Tartars, and remained travelling among them for sixteen months. This Friar
John hath written a little history, which is come to our hands, of what he
saw among the Tartars, or learnt from divers persons living in captivity.
From which I have inserted such things, in the following relation, as were
wanting in the accounts given me by Friar Simon.
SECTION III.
Of the Situation and Quality of the Land of the Tartars, from Carpini.
The land of Mongolia or Tartary is in the east part of the world, where the
east and north are believed to unite[1]; haying the country of Kathay, 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; on the west the province
of Naimani, and the ocean on the north. In some parts it is full of
mountains, in other parts quite plain; but everywhere interspersed with
sandy barrens, not an hundredth part of the whole being fertile, as it
cannot be cultivated except where it is watered with rivers, which are very
rare.
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