In These Ships, The Tartars Sailed To A Principal City Of Zipangu, Into Which They Were Admitted Without Any Suspicion, Finding Hardly Any Within Its Walls Except Women, The Men Being All Absent On The Expedition Into The Uninhabited Island.

The Zipanguers collected a new fleet and army to besiege the city, and the Tartars receiving no succour, were constrained to surrender, after a defence of six months, on terms by which their lives were spared.

This happened in the year 1264[5]. For the bad conduct of the two commanders, the great khan ordered one to be beheaded, and sent the other to the desert island of Zerga, in which malefactors are punished, by sewing them up in the new flayed hide of a buffalo, which shrinks so much in drying, as to put them to exquisite torture, and brings them to a miserable death.

The idols in Zipangu and the adjoining islands are strangely made, some having the head of a bull, others of a hog, or a dog, and in other most monstrous fashions. Some have heads with four faces, others three heads on one neck, while some have faces on their shoulders. Some have four arms, others ten, or even an hundred arms; and that idol is reputed the most powerful, and is held in greatest reverence, which has the greatest number. When asked the reason of making their idols in such distorted and ridiculous forms, they answer that such is the custom which has been handed down from their ancestors.

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