PREFACE TO THE 



journals of 2. Friers, who were some of the first j 



Christians that travailed farthest that way, and brought I 



home most particular intelligence & knowledge of all | 



things which they had seene. These Friers were sent i 



as Ambassadours unto the savage Tartars (who had | 



as then wasted and overrunne a great part of Asia, | 



and had pierced farre into Europe with fire and sword) i 



to mitigate their fury, and to offer the glad tidings of I 



the Gospel unto them. The former, namely Johannes ! 



de Piano Carpini (whose journey, because he road sixe ' 



moneths poste directly beyond Boristhenes, did, I thinke, ■ 



both for length and difBcultie farre surpasse that of | 



Alexander the great, unto the river of Indus) was in the ' 



yeere 1246. sent with the authoritie and commission of ' 



a Legate from Pope Innocentius the fourth : who ] 



passed through more garisons of the Tartars, and I 



wandered over more vast, barren, and cold deserts, I 



then (I suppose) an army of an hundred thousand good I 



souldiers could have done. The other, to wit, William : 



de Rubricis, was 1253. by the way of Constantinople, ; 

 of the Euxin sea, and of Taurica Chersonesus imployed 



in an ambassage from Lewis the French King (waging . 

 warre as then against the Saracens in the Holy land) 

 unto one Sartach a great duke of the Tartars, which 

 Sartach sent him forthwith unto his father Baatu, and 



from Baatu he was conducted over many large territories ! 



unto the Court of Mangu-Can their Emperour. Both ! 



of them have so well played their parts, in declaring , 



what befell them before they came at the Tartars, what i 



a terrible and unmanerly welcomming they had at their | 



first arrivall, what cold intertainment they felt in traveil- I 

 ing towards the great Can, and what slender cheere they 

 found at his Court ; that they seeme no lesse worthy of 

 praise then of pitie. But in describing of the Tartars 

 Countrey, and of the Regions adjacent, in setting downe 

 the base and sillie beginnings of that huge and over- 

 spreading Empire, in registring their manifolde warres 

 and bloody conquests, in making relation of their hords 



lii 



