OF THE PROVINCE OF ADEN, AND OF SEVERAL
COUNTRIES REPUTED TO BE INACCESSIBLE.
After having spoken of the provinces on the coast, I will now return
to some provinces more to the north, where many Tartars dwell, which
have a king called Caidu, of the race of Zingis-Khan, but subject to
none. These observe the customs of their ancestors, dwell not in
cities, castles, or fortresses, but dwell with their king in the
fields, plains, valleys, and forests, and are esteemed true Tartars.
They have no sort of corn, but live on flesh and milk in great peace.
They have multitudes of horses, kine, sheep, and other beasts. There
are found great white bears, twenty palms long, black foxes, very
large, wild asses, and little beasts called Rondes, which bear the
sable furs and variarcolini, and those which are called Pharaoh's
rats, which the Tartars are skilful in taking. The great lakes,
which are frozen, except for a few months in the year, are the cause
that in the summer it is scarce to be travelled for mire, and
therefore the merchants, in going to buy their furs for fourteen
days' journey through the desert, have set up for each day a house of
wood, where they barter with the inhabitants, and in winter they use
sledges without wheels, and plain on the bottom, rising with a
semicircle at the top, or end, which are drawn on the ice by beasts
like great dogs, by couples, the sledge-man only with his merchant
and furs sitting therein.
At the extremity of the region of these Tartars is a country reaching
to the farthest north, called the obscure land, because the most part
of the winter months the sun appears not, and the air is thick and
darkish as betimes in the morning with us. The men there are pale
and squat, have no prince, and live like beasts. The Tartars often
rob them of their cattle in those dark months, and, lest they should
lose their way, they ride on mares which have colts sucking, which
they leave with a guard at the entrance of that country, where the
light beginneth to fail, and when they have taken their prey, give
reins to the mares, which hasten to their colts. In their
long-continued summer, they take many of the finest furs (on
occasion, of the Tartars going to rob them), of which I have heard
some are brought into Russia. Russia is a great country near that
northern darkness. The people are Greek Christians, the men and
women fair, and pay tribute to the King of the Tartars of the west,
on whom they border. On the east there is plenty of furs, wax, and
mines of silver; it reaches, as I was told, to the ocean sea, in
which are islands that abound in ger-falcons and falcons.