These Tartars, Observant Of The Customs Of Their Ancestors,
Dwell Not In Cities, Castles, Or Fortresses, But Continually Roam About,
Along With Their King, In The Plains And Forests, And Are Esteemed True
Tartars.
They have no corn of any kind, but have multitudes of horses,
cattle, sheep, and other beasts, and live on flesh and milk, in great
peace.
In their country there are white bears of large size, twenty palms
in length; very large wild asses, little beasts called rondes, from which
we have the valuable fur called sables, and various other animals producing
fine furs, which the Tartars are very skilful in taking. This country
abounds in great lakes, which are frozen over, except for a few months in
every year, and in summer it is hardly possible to travel, on account of
marshes and waters; for which reason, the merchants who go to buy furs, and
who have to travel for fourteen days through the desert, have wooden houses
at the end of each days journey, where they barter with the inhabitants,
and in winter they travel in sledges without wheels, quite flat at the
bottom, and rising semicircularly at the top, and these are drawn by great
dogs, yoked in couples, the sledgeman only with his merchant and furs,
sitting within[7].
Beyond these Tartars is a country reaching to the extremest north, called
the Obscure land, because the sun never appears during the greatest part
of the winter months, and the air is perpetually thick and darkish, as is
the case with us sometimes in hazy mornings.
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