chase of all manner of
beasts and birds. It is, however, by no means a healthy region, but
grievously the reverse.[NOTE 3] In days of old the nobles there were
valiant men, and did doughty deeds of arms; but nowadays they are poor
creatures, and good at nought, unless it be at boozing; they are great at
that. Howbeit, they have a city upon the sea, which is called LAYAS, at
which there is a great trade. For you must know that all the spicery, and
the cloths of silk and gold, and the other valuable wares that come from
the interior, are brought to that city. And the merchants of Venice and
Genoa, and other countries, come thither to sell their goods, and to buy
what they lack. And whatsoever persons would travel to the interior (of
the East), merchants or others, they take their way by this city of
Layas.[NOTE 4]

Having now told you about the Lesser Hermenia, we shall next tell you
about Turcomania.

NOTE 1.--The _Petite Hermenie_ of the Middle Ages was quite distinct from
the Armenia Minor of the ancient geographers, which name the latter
applied to the western portion of Armenia, west of the Euphrates, and
immediately north of Cappadocia.

But when the old Armenian monarchy was broken up (1079-80), Rupen, a
kinsman of the Bagratid Kings, with many of his countrymen, took refuge in
the Taurus. His first descendants ruled as _barons_; a title adopted
apparently from the Crusaders, but still preserved in Armenia. Leon, the
great-great-grandson of Rupen, was consecrated King under the supremacy of
the Pope and the Western Empire in 1198. The kingdom was at its zenith
under Hetum or Hayton I., husband of Leon's daughter Isabel (1224-1269);
he was, however, prudent enough to make an early submission to the
Mongols, and remained ever staunch to them, which brought his territory
constantly under the flail of Egypt. It included at one time all Cilicia,
with many cities of Syria and the ancient Armenia Minor, of Isauria and
Cappadocia. The male line of Rupen becoming extinct in 1342, the kingdom
passed to John de Lusignan, of the royal house of Cyprus, and in 1375 it
was put an end to by the Sultan of Egypt. Leon VI., the ex-king, into
whose mouth Froissart puts some extraordinary geography, had a pension of
1000_l._ a year granted him by our Richard II., and died at Paris in 1398.

[Illustration: Coin of King Hetum and his Queen Isabel.]

The chief remaining vestige of this little monarchy is the continued
existence of