Page:Christianity in China, Tartary, and Thibet Volume I.djvu/245

233 SUPEESTITIOUS PRACTICES OF MANGOU-KIIAN. 233 tation, he "performed some magic by rapping on a table." Mangou himself was specially addicted to a kind of conjuration performed with burnt bones. When about to undertake any business that occasioned him anxiety, he used to have three bones brought to him, and hold- ing them in his hands, put the question whether he would be successful or not, and then gave the bones to be burnt. As soon as they had become blackened by combustion, they were brought back to him, and he ex- amined them. If the strength of the fire had cracked the bones, the emperor would be unlucky, and he accordingly gave the matter up ; but if they had re- mained entire, the fates, it was supposed, would be pro- pitious. This practice is still in use among the Mongols, after the lapse of six hundred years ; and the bone ge- nerally chosen for this purpose is the blade-bone of a shoulder of mutton. Great numbers of them are often seen suspended like ex votos, in the pagodas and tents, and usually covered with sentences in Thibetan charac- ters written by the Lamas. Towards the festival of Easter, the missionaries fol- lowed Mangou-Khan to Kara-Koroum, a town that appeared to them inferior to St. Denis in France. " Its monastery," adds Rubruk, " is ten times bigger than the whole palace of Mangou." There were in the town two great streets, one called that of the Saracens, where the markets and fairs were held, and where there were a considerable number of foreign merchants, attracted by the presence of the court, and the arrival of a crowd of ambassadors. The other street was the quarter of Cathay or of the Chinese, and there were to be found all sorts of artisans.