Page:Christianity in China, Tartary, and Thibet Volume I.djvu/259

247 JOURNEY OF HAYTON TO TARTAR Y. 247 " In the year of the Incarnation of our Lord, one thousand two hundred, Aytone (Hayton), King of Ar- menia, a prince of very noble memory, seeing how the Tartars had conquered the world as far as the kingdom of Turkey, and that they had met with no monarch powerful enough to put them down, assembled the wise men of his kingdom and pointed this out to them, and requested their counsel. They all agreed with their noble and wise king that he himself should go in person to the great Khan of the Tartars, to gain his good will and make with him a perpetual alliance ; but before he went himself, the king was to send his brother, the con- stable of his kingdom, to obtain a safe conduct for him, so that he might go and come in safety. And my Lord his brother went with a fine company and took with him great presents to the Khan, and did very nobly the business for which he was sent ; but it was four years before he came back to the land of Armenia. When he returned he related to his brother the king, in order, all that he had seen and done. Then, without any delay, the king set forth, but secretly and with few people, because he feared to be recognised in the king- dom of Turkey, which was his neighbour and enemy. But it pleased our Lord God, that the Solclan of Turkey had been at that time vanquished and discomfited by a him to France, where the Pope then was ; it was this monk who wrote the history from which we quote. It was written in French, then much used in the East, afterwards translated by the Pope's order into Latin by a Nicolas Salconi, and then put back into French again by a monk of St. Omcr's, named Friar John of Long d' Ypre, in the year 1351. It was printed in 1529 in handsome Gothic cha- racters, in the collection entitled " Hystoire Merveilleuse du Grant Caan." R 4