- Compare With Marco's Account The Report Of The Mongols, Which Was
Brought By The Spies Of Mahomed, Sultan Of Khwarizm, When Invasion Was
First Menaced By Chinghiz:
"The army of Chinghiz is countless, as a swarm
of ants or locusts.
Their warriors are matchless in lion-like valour, in
obedience, and endurance. They take no rest, and flight or retreat is
unknown to them. On their expeditions they are accompanied by oxen, sheep,
camels, and horses, and sweet or sour milk suffices them for food. Their
horses scratch the earth with their hoofs and feed on the roots and
grasses they dig up, so that they need neither straw nor oats. They
themselves reck nothing of the clean or the unclean in food, and eat the
flesh of all animals, even of dogs, swine, and bears. They will open a
horse's vein, draw blood, and drink it.... In victory they leave neither
small nor great alive; they cut up women great with child and cleave the
fruit of the womb. If they come to a great river, as they know nothing of
boats, they sew skins together, stitch up all their goods therein, tie the
bundle to their horses' tails, mount with a hard grip of the mane, and so
swim over." This passage is an absolute abridgment of many chapters of
Carpini. Still more terse was the sketch of Mongol proceedings drawn by a
fugitive from Bokhara after Chinghiz's devastations there. It was set
forth in one unconscious hexameter:
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