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The city of Cambalu is seated on a great river in the province of Kathay, or Northern China, and its name signifies the city of the prince, having been the royal residence in former times.
Travelling eastwards for seven days towards Kathay, there are many cities, inhabited by idolaters, Mahometans, and Nestorians, who live by commerce and manufactures, and who make stuffs wrought with gold and flowers, and other silken stuffs of all kinds, and colours like those made among us, and also woollen cloths of various kinds.
In its rivers abundance of jaspers, chalcedonies, and other fine stones are found, which are carried by merchants all the way to Ouchach or Kathay, and sold there with great profit From Peim to Sartem, and quite through this latter province, the soil is very sandy, having very little water, and that generally bad.
Their tails are remarkably long and hairy, and are in great estimation all over the East, where they are often carried on long poles, by way of ornament, and are likewise much employed for driving away flies. On the fourteenth, they arrived at a place within twelve stages of Sekju , the first city in Kathay.
The name of Kathay, or Cathay, was applied to this country by ancient writers, among whom was Marco Polo, a Venetian, who was about the first who penetrated its boundaries. I have assumed it, therefore, as a title, as much from its antiquity as for its euphony.
The nurse also confessed that she had used some spells to procure the love of her lady, but had never done any thing to hurt her. On being demanded to say whether her husband knew of her incantations, she excused him, saying that he had burnt the characters which she had made. Then she was put to death, and the husband was sent to be judged by his bishop in Kathay.
His account of the pretended varieties of the human race, as of nations of Hermaphrodites, and others equally ridiculous, which he places in separate islands of the Indian ocean, are mere transcripts from Pliny. His accounts of Mangi and Kathay, or southern and northern China, are most inaccurately stolen from Marco Polo, and disguised or rather disfigured to conceal the theft.
The land of Mongolia or Tartary is in the east part of the world, where the east and north are believed to unite ; haying the country of Kathay, and the people called Solangi on the east; on the south the country of the Saracens; the land of the Huini on the south-east; on the west the province of Naimani, and the ocean on the north.
One of these on the mothers side he sent into the country of the Assassines, called Mulibet by the Tartars, with orders to kill them all. Another was sent into Persia, who is supposed to have orders to send armies into Turkey, and from thence against Bagdat and Vestacius. One of his other brothers has been sent into Kathay, to reduce certain rebels.
"I am of Kathay and your vilest slave," replied the man, in good Turkish. "In my own country I was a poet. Destiny hath brought me here, and I now work in the gardens of the palace." "If you are a poet, you can tell me many a story." "Your slave has told thousands in his lifetime, such hath been my fate."
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