The Provisions Are Furnished From The Circumjacent Country, Out Of
The Tributes.
At every one of these, there are four hundred horses, two
hundred of which are kept ready for use in the stables, and the other two
hundred at grass, each division for a month alternately.
These horses are
destined for the use of ambassadors and messengers, who leave their tired
horses, and get fresh ones at every stage. In mountainous places, where
there were no villages, the khan has established colonies of about ten
thousand people in each, in the neighbourhood of these post-houses, that
they may cultivate the ground, and supply provisions. These excellent
regulations extend to the utmost limits of the empire, in all directions,
so that there are about ten thousand imperial inns or lambs in the whole
empire; and the number of horses appointed in these, for the service of
messengers, exceeds two hundred thousand[2]; by which means, intelligence
is forwarded to the court without delay, from all parts of the empire. If
any person should wonder how so many beasts and men can be procured and
provided for, let him consider that the Mahometans and pagans have many
women, and great numbers, of children, some having even so many as thirty
sons, all able to follow them armed into the field. As for victuals, they
sow rice, panik, and millet, which yield an hundred after one, and they
allow no land that is fit to carry crops to remain uncultivated. As wheat
does not thrive in this country it is little sown, and they use no bread,
but feed upon the formerly mentioned grains, boiled in milk, or made into
broth along with flesh.
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