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Updated: June 18, 2025
We then rehearsed our former oration on our knees, and produced our letters, and requested the aid of interpreters to translate them. These were sent us on Good Friday, and, with their assistance, our letters were carefully translated into the Russian, Tartarian, and Saracen languages, and presented to Baatu, who read them with attention.
We travelled along with Baatu, down the banks of the Volga for five weeks, and were often so much in want of provisions, that my companion was sometimes so extremely hungry as even to weep. For though there is always a fair or market following the court, it was so far from us, that we, who were forced to travel on foot, were unable to reach it.
There then was in this province one Scacatai, or Zagathai, related to Baatu, to whom the emperor of Constantinople had written requisitorial letters, that I might be permitted to proceed on my journey. On being informed of this, they supplied us with horses and oxen, and appointed two men to conduct us on our journey, and those which we had brought with us from Soldaia returned.
At the entrance of the tent there stood a bench well furnished with cosmos, and with many superb cups of gold and silver, richly set with precious stones. Baatu surveyed us earnestly for some time, and we him; he was of a fresh ruddy colour, and in my opinion had a strong resemblance to the late Lord John de Beaumont.
This person professes himself to be of the Mahometan faith, and will not permit swines flesh to be eaten in his dominions. But it appearing to Baatu, that his affairs suffered detriment by this intercourse with the Mahometans, we learnt on our return, that he had commanded Berta to remove from the Iron-gate to the east side of the Volga.
For the space of four days which we spent in the court of Sartach, we had no victuals allowed us, except once a little cosmos; and during our journey to the residence of his father Baatu, we travelled in great fear, on account of certain Russian, Hungarian, and Alanian servants of the Tartars, who often assemble secretly in the night, in troops of twenty or thirty together, and being armed with bows and arrows, murder and rob whoever they meet with, hiding themselves during the day.
We thus journeyed on from station to station, till at length a few days before the festival of Mary Magdalen, 22d July, we arrived on the banks of the mighty river Tanais or Don, which divides Europe from Asia. At this place Baatu and Sartach had established a station of Russians on the eastern bank of the river, on purpose to transport merchants and messengers across.
We then departed from the tent of audience, and immediately afterwards our guide came and told us, that, as our king had desired that we might remain in this country, Baatu could not consent to this without the knowledge and authority of Mangu-khan; and it was necessary, therefore, that I should go with the interpreter to Mangu, while my companion and the clerk should return to the court of Sartach, and remain there till my return.
But because duke Daniel, the brother of Wasilico was absent at the court of Baatu, they could not then give a satisfactory answer.
For they are so puffed up with pride, that they think the whole world should make peace with them; but if I might be suffered, I would preach war against them to the utmost of my power. I dared not deliver the true cause of my journey, lest, in so doing, I might contradict what had been written by Baatu, and therefore always said we came because he sent us.
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