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As a matter of fact, William of Rubruck had seen and described it before him. For Marco Polo's account of this custom in the province which he calls 'Kardandan', see op. cit., p. 250. An illustration of it from an album belonging to the close of the Ming dynasty is reproduced in S.W. Bushell, Chinese Art , fig. 134. Marco Polo, op. cit., pp. 21-2.
The costliness of their dresses, in silks and jewellery, can scarcely be imagined. op. cit., pp. 296, 297-8. Yule, op. cit., II, p. 184. For Prester John see Sir Henry Yule's article 'Prester John' in the Encyclopædia Britannica, and Lynn Thorndike, A History of Magic and Experimental Science , II, pp. 236-45. Rubruck especially is a most delightful person.
Assuredly, St Francis crows over St Dominic somewhere in the courts of Heaven; his friars never feared for their skins, as they travelled blithely into the heat of India and the cold of central Asia; and it is easy to imagine the comments of fat William of Rubruck upon the flight of the profound theologians.
In the year of grace 1268, much was known about central Asia, for in 1245 the Pope had sent the Italian friar John of Plano Carpini thither, and in 1251 another friar, William of Rubruck, a French Fleming, had been sent by the saintly Louis, King of France. Both got as far as Karakorum, the Tartar camp on the borders of northern China, though they did not enter China itself.
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