[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 Deg.

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.

[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.

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