The
Inhabitants Live By Their Cultivation And Their Cattle, For They Have No
Trade.
At this city you must needs lay in victuals for forty days, because
when you quit Etzina, you enter
On a desert which extends forty days'
journey to the north, and on which you meet with no habitation nor
baiting-place.[NOTE 2] In the summer-time, indeed, you will fall in with
people, but in the winter the cold is too great. You also meet with wild
beasts (for there are some small pine-woods here and there), and with
numbers of wild asses.[NOTE 3] When you have travelled these forty days
across the Desert you come to a certain province lying to the north. Its
name you shall hear presently.
[Illustration: Wild Ass of Mongolia.]
NOTE 1. - Deguignes says that YETSINA is found in a Chinese Map of Tartary
of the Mongol era, and this is confirmed by Pauthier, who reads it
Itsinai, and adds that the text of the Map names it as one of the seven
Lu or Circuits of the Province of Kansuh (or Tangut). Indeed, in
D'Anville's Atlas we find a river called Etsina Pira, running northward
from Kanchau, and a little below the 41st parallel joining another from
Suhchau. Beyond the junction is a town called Hoa-tsiang, which probably
represents Etzina. Yetsina is also mentioned in Gaubil's History of
Chinghiz as taken by that conqueror in 1226, on his last campaign against
Tangut. This capture would also seem from Petis de la Croix to be
mentioned by Rashiduddin.
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