[28] Perhaps Memphis, as he evidently alludes to the pyramids.—­E.

[29] Kahira, or Cairo, called also Messir.—­E.

[30] Elul contains from the middle of August to the middle of September and
    Tisri from that to the middle of October.  But the Nile begins to rise
    in the middle of June, and returns to its usual level in October.—­E.

[31] Of the Rabbinists or Talmudists.—­E.

[32] This may possibly have been the Sarcophagus brought lately from
    Alexandria, and deposited in the British museum, under the strange
    idea of having been the tomb of Alexander.  Benjamin seems to have
    known nothing about the hieroglyphics, with which his tomb was
    obviously covered.—­E.

[33] This short commentary upon three words in that part of the travels of
    Benjamin, which has been omitted in Harris, is extracted from Forster,
    Hist of Voy. and Disc. in the North, p. 92, and shews the extreme
    difficulty of any attempt to give an accurate edition of the whole
    work, if that should be thought of, as it would require critical skill
    not only in Hebrew, but in the languages of the different countries to
    which the travels refer.—­E.

CHAP.  VI.

Travels of an Englishman into Tartary, and thence into Poland, Hungary, and Germany, in 1243.[1]

This earliest remaining direct account of the Tartars, or Mongols receiving that name, which is extremely short and inconclusive, is recorded by Matthew Paris, in a letter from Yvo de Narbonne to the archbishop of Bourdeaux, and is here given as a literary curiosity.

* * * * *

Provoked by the sins of the Christians, the Lord hath become as it were a destroying enemy, and a dreadful avenger; having sent among us a prodigiously numerous, most barbarous, and inhuman people, whose law is lawless, and whose wrath is furious, even as the rod of God’s anger, overrunning and utterly ruining infinite countries, and cruelly destroying every thing where they come with fire and sword.  This present summer, that nation which is called Tartars, leaving Hungary, which they had surprised by treason, laid siege, with many thousand soldiers, to the town of Newstadt, in which I then dwelt, in which there were not above fifty men at arms, and twenty cross-bow-men, left in garrison.  All these observing from certain high places the vast army of the enemy, and abhorring the beastly cruelty of the accomplices of Antichrist, signified to the governor the hideous lamentations of his Christian subjects, who, in all the adjoining provinces, were surprised and cruelly destroyed, without any respect of rank, fortune, age, or sex.  The Tartarian chieftains, and their brutishly savage followers, glutted themselves with the carcasses of the inhabitants, leaving nothing for the vultures but the bare bones;