Page:Christianity in China, Tartary, and Thibet Volume I.djvu/422

410 410 CHRISTIANITY IN CHINA, ETC. various encampments, living like them upon milk, and glad to pass their days in the Tartars' tents, if they were only permitted to preach the Gospel to their occupants. What energy and perseverance did not these poor monks display! And yet how few accounts have they left of their incomparable journeys and immense labours! We can only collect with care the details concerning them found scattered here and there through the letters which they occasionally addressed to the convents they had quitted. The historian "Wadding has preserved for us one letter of Pascal, the Spanish missionary to Ili- Balik, addressed to the superior and monks of his con- vent at Vittoria ; and we gladly give it here, as it may help to make the reader acquainted with these admir- able apostles of the middle ages, who could both do great things, and relate them with simplicity and can- dour : — " We hereby inform you, holy Father, and you, very dear brothers, that after having left you with brother Gonsalvi of Transtorna, we went to Avignon, where we received the blessing of your venerable superior-general. We embarked at Venice, and after having traversed the Adriatic, and leaving Sclavonia on the left and Turkey on the right*, we landed near Constantinople, where we found the Father Vicar of China, and of the Oriental province. We then took ship, and, crossing the Black Sea, whose depth is an unfathomable abyss, we reached the empire of the Tartars, and after that, having again navigated a sea without bottom, we anchored at the mouth of the Volga. As I was in more haste than my companion, I mounted a cart drawn by horses, which carried me to Serai, the capital of Kiptchak, while my European territory,
 * It will be remembered that the Turks had at that time no