Page:Christianity in China, Tartary, and Thibet Volume I.djvu/237

225 JOURNEY TO THE COURT OF MANGOU-KIIAN. 225 On the 16th of September they left that river and directed their course towards the Ural. The cold had now become intense, and the guide charged to conduct the caravan warned the monks that they would have to travel four months more before reaching the court of Mangou-Khan, and that the frost in those countries was so terrible that it split trees and stones. He then asked them whether they were capable of enduring the hardships of such a journey; and these intrepid mis- sionaries replied, that what other men could endure they, by the grace of God, would be able to endure also. Warmer clothing was then given to them, of a kind adapted to the rigour of this frightful climate, namely, a thick robe and drawers of sheepskin, felt boots and Ie<r2;in2;s, and laro-e cloaks of the same ma- terial. During the whole journey they lived chiefly on millet boiled in water and kumys. Sometimes in the evening they had a little meat, but they were obliged to eat it almost raw, from the want of wood for fuel. "When we stopped at night," says Rubruk, "we could not well go to gather the dung of horses and oxen, and there was hardly anything else to be found of which fire could be made." Travellers through the deserts of Tartary meet in the present day with the very same difficulty. Rubruk relates that he saw in these solitudes asses that resembled mules, and he probably speaks of the animal called the hemion, which we often met with in numerous herds during our journey from Pekin to Lha-ssa, through the Mongolian steppes. This animal is a kind of ass about the size of an ordinary mule, but handsomer, and very light and graceful in its move- ments. Its skin is, on the back, of a reddish hue, but vol. i. Q