Page:Christianity in China, Tartary, and Thibet Volume I.djvu/161

149 ADVENTURES OF ROGER OF VARADIN. 149 This monk Roger had been an eyewitness and a victim of the atrocities of the Mongols in his country, and for a long time, he says, " death would have been a consolation for him, and life was only a torment." This is what he tells us of his own adventures * : — " Whilst the Tartars were sacking Yaradin, I escaped by night into a fortified island, but not thinking myself safe there, I took refuge in a neighbouring forest. In the morning, the island was occupied by the Tartars, who killed all the people in it ; my very hair stood up on hearing of these massacres, and a cold sweat, as of death, burst from me, when I thought of that army of murderers. " I continued to wander about the woods, but I was starving with hunger, and was obliged to venture at night into the island, in order to search among the bodies for morsels of food or flour, which I secretly carried away. I lived thus for twenty days, hiding myself in caverns and ditches, and in the hollow trunks of trees. " The Tartars then promised that they would do no harm to the inhabitants, who would come out of their concealment. I did not myself depend much on this promise, and my suspicions were but too just ; but I thought it better to go at once to their camp, than to await my fate in a village, and I, therefore, gave myself up to a Hungarian, who had gone into the service of the Tartars, and who deigned, as a great favour, to place me among the number of his servants. I was almost naked ; but my business was to mind the waggons ; and I had the fear of death continually before me, for I knew that in l 3
 * Rogerii, " Miserabile Carmen," p. 293.