History of the Mongols, from the 9th to the 19th Century Volume 2, PT. 1

This historic book may have numerous typos and missing text. Purchasers can usually download a free scanned copy of the original book (without typos) from the publisher. Not indexed. Not illustrated. 1880 edition. Excerpt: ... Nurus each a present of novena (i.e., a present of nine things, as bread, wine, honey, &c.), and Barbaro himself headed the deputation, and commended the town and its inhabitants to his favour. He found him reclining in the mosque with his head towards N urus, and he tells us he was twenty-two years old and N urus twenty-five. He received them well, jocularly remarking " what a town is this, where three men have but three eyes among them." This he said because Buran Taia-Pietra, their Turkoman attendant, Zuan Greco, the consul's servant, and he that carried the hydromel had each lost an eye.? ' Karamzin, v. 356. 1 Id., 366, 367. 1 Golden Horde, 389. Note, 1. Q This Iehossphat Bsrbsro explains as the grey wood, but Von Hammer as the ice wood. (Barbs1o's Travels, Hackluyt Society, 1873, p. 9. Golden Horde, 389.) Barbaro tells us that the scouts who preceded the army each carried a bottle made of goat's skin, and containing a paste made of millet and honey and a wooden bowl, so that when they failed to kill any game they mixed some of the paste with water and drank it. They also ate different herbs and roots. A necessity of their diet was salt, without which he says their mouths swelled and festered. On the march the Khan went first, then herds of horses, sixty, one hundred, or two hundred together, then camels and oxen, and lastly, small beasts----a procession six days' journey long--and this was only the advanced division. " We stood on the walls," says Barbaro "(for we kept the gates shut), and in the evening we were weary of looking, for the multitude of these people and beasts was such that the diameter of the plain which they occupied seemed a Paganea of 120 miles."1 At Bosagaj, ...