Page:Christianity in China, Tartary, and Thibet Volume I.djvu/376

364 364 CHRISTIANITY IN CHINA, ETC. entirely deprived of these apostles ; even their bones, he thought, might still exercise a salutary influence, and God would bestow on those precious relics a special virtue for sanctification and salvation. He caused the coffins to be opened, therefore, collected with veneration the bones of the martyrs, and determined himself to re- move them into China ; and he accordingly set out from Tana with this rich treasure, in company with another of the brethren and a servant. It was an affecting thing to see this holy priest departing and bearing to nations of infidels the bones of his brethren martyred for the faith, and making of them a kind of sacred armour in which to march to the conquest of souls. During his long peregrinations, he never ceased to watch with tender and pious solicitude over his precious charge ; and in the night, he was in the habit of placing it under his head, as if to derive from this martyr- pillow the indomitable courage of the apostle. Oderic, after having visited the islands of Ceylon, Sumatra, Java, and Borneo, arrived at length in China; and the enumeration of the difficulties he had to sur- mount in order to reach it, makes us presume that he crossed the marshy countries of Pegu and Ava. He made his entrance into the empire by the southern pro- vinces, which he calls Manzi, from the word Man-dze, by which were designated then, as now, the Chinese of the south. The description he gives of the country and its inhabitants, "who," says he, "are all artisans or trades- men," is so accurate that it is easy to recognise, more than five years after, the nation visited by Oderic in the fourteenth century. He speaks of several very populous towns which he met with on his way, and, amongst others, of Sou-Tcheou, whose beauty and wealth he