Page:Christianity in China, Tartary, and Thibet Volume I.djvu/423

411 pascal's narrative. 411 companion was taken with some other brothers to Urganthe. My intention was at first to join him, but I afterwards preferred staying to learn the language of the country ; and by the grace of God, I have learnt the Mongol tongue, and the Oigour characters, which are in general use throughout these countries, — in Tartary, Persia, Chaldea, Medea, and China. " My companion afterwards left Urganthe to return to 3^011 in Spain ; but as for me I have a horror — even to vomiting — of a return. I would not turn back, for I desire to profit by the favour granted by the sove- reign pontiff to all the monks who come to these coun- tries, and who have the same indulgences as those who make the pilgrimage to Jerusalem. "Thus, my fathers, since by the grace of God I had learned the language of the country, I often preached, without an interpreter, the word of God to the Sa- racens, as well as to schismatic and heretic Christians ; but in the meanwhile I received from my vicar apostolic an order, in the name of my obedience as a monk, to set off and complete my journey. After having re- mained more than a year at Serai, the capital of Kiptchak, where one of our brethren, named Stephen of Hungary, was martyred three years ago by th'e Sa- racens, I embarked with the Armenians on a river they call the Tigris, and then, proceeding along the sea- shore, we arrived after twelve days' march at Saratchik.* We then mounted on a car drawn by camels, whose pace is dreadful ; and in fifty days I reached Urganthe, a town on the confines of the empire of the Tartars and Caucasus, and contains the remains of some very fine buildings, constructed in the time of the Tartars.
 * This town belongs at present to the Russian government of the