The Tartars Are Exceedingly Crafty In War, In Which They Have Been Continually Engaged For The Last Forty-Two Years Against All The Surrounding Nations.

When they have to pass rivers, the principal people secure their garments in bags of thin leather, drawn together like purses, and closely tied.

They fix these to their saddles, along with their other baggage, and tie the whole to their horse's tail, sitting upon the whole bundle as a kind of boat or float; and the man who guides the horse is made to swim in a similar manner, sometimes having two oars to assist in rowing, as it were, across the river. The horse is then forced into the river, and all the other horses follow, and in this manner they pass across deep and rapid rivers[1]. The poorer people have each a purse or bag of leather well sewed, into which they pack up all their things, well tied up at the mouth, which they hang to the tails of their horses, and thus swim across.

[1] This mode of passing over rivers, though carefully translated, is by no means obviously described. I am apt to suppose that the leathern bags, besides holding the apparel and other valuables, were large enough to be blown up with air so as to serve as floats, like those used by the ancient Macedonians; a practice which they may have learnt from the Scythians. The Latin of Vincentius Beluacensis appears to have been translated from the French original of Carpini, from the following circumstance:

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