There Are Many Rivers In This Country, And Much Game, And Lions
Are Also To Be Met With.
As travellers can find no food in this part of
their journey, they must carry enough with them for two days.
At the end of
two days journey, we came to a castle called Thaican, Thalkan, or Thakan,
where we saw pleasant fields and abundance of corn. The mountains to the
south of this place are high, some of which contain white salt, so
extremely hard that it has to be dug out and broken with iron tools; and
the inhabitants, from thirty days journey all around, come here to procure
salt, which is of most excellent quality, and is in such amazing
quantities, that the whole world might be supplied from these mines. The
other mountains produce abundance of almonds and pistachio nuts.
Going between the east and north-east from hence, the country is fruitful,
but the inhabitants are perfidious Mahometans, murderers, thieves, and
drunkards. Their wine is boiled, and truly excellent. They go bareheaded,
except that the men bind a string or fillet, ten handbreadths long, about
their heads. They make breeches and shoes of the skins of wild beasts, and
use no other garments. After three days journey is the town of Scasom[6],
seated in a plain, through the middle of which there flows a great river;
and there are many castles in the surrounding mountains[7]. There are many
porcupines in this country, which are hunted by dogs; and these animals,
contracting themselves with great fury, cast their sharp quills at the men
and dogs, and often wound them.
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