From This Time, The Kathayans Came
Daily To Meet Them, Erecting Tents Or Huts, Adorned With Green Boughs, In
The
Desert for their accommodation, and plentifully supplied their tables
with fowls, and various kinds of flesh, fruits, fresh and dried,
And other
victuals, all served on porcelain or china dishes, besides several kinds of
strong liquors; and henceforwards they were as splendidly regaled in the
desert as they afterwards were in the cities of Kathay. According to the
list taken by the Kathayans, Amir Shadi Khoja, and Gaksheh, had 200 persons
in their retinue; Soltan Ahmed and Gayath-addin, 500; Argdak, sixty;
Ardvan, fifty; and Taj'oddin, fifty; in all 860 persons; among whom were
many merchants, who were passed as belonging to the retinue of the
ambassadors, and who were, afterwards under the necessity of performing the
services which fell to their lot, according to the register. In taking this
list, the Kathayan officers made them swear that there were no other
persons besides those named, and informed them that they would be despised
if they did not tell the truth.
It is remarkable, that among the many viands and liquors supplied to them,
in the before-mentioned entertainment, there was a pot of Chinese tea,
which the Jesuit Trigault imagined had only come into use in China of late
years. Tea is called Tscha by the Chinese, and its use is very ancient,
as the earlier of the two Mahometan travellers, who wrote in 851 and 867,
mention the use, by the Chinese in that early period, of the infusion of
the leaves of a shrub called sah or tsha.
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