bon, Dec. and Fall, IV. 355.

[2] Decl. and Fall, XI. 402.

[3] Dashte Kipzak, or the plain of Kipzak, extended on both
sides of the Volga, towards the Jaik or Ural, and the Borysthenes or
Dnieper, and is supposed to have given name to the Cosacs.--Gibb.

[4] As reported by Gibbon, from Matthew Paris, p. 396, forty or
fifty herrings were sold for a shilling. This must be an error,
perhaps for 40 or 50 thousand; as a shilling of these days was worth
at least from fifteen to twenty modern shillings in effective value;
and within memory herrings have often sold, in a very plentiful
fishery, for a shilling the cart-load, when salt could not be had in
sufficient quantity.--E.

[5] Decl. and Fall. XII. I.

CHAP. VIII.

_The Travels of John de Plano Carpini and other Friars, sent about the year
1246, as ambassadors from Pope Innocent IV, to the great Khan of the Moguls
or Tartars_.[1]

INTRODUCTION.

In the collection of early Voyages, Travels, and Discoveries, by Hakluyt,
published originally in 1599, and reprinted at London in 1809 with
additions, there are two separate relations of these travels. The _first_,
in p. 24, is the journal of John de Plano Carpini, an Italian minorite,
who, accompanied by friar Benedict, a Polander, went in 1246 by the north
of the Caspian sea, to the residence of Batu-khan, and thence to Kajuk-
khan, whom he calls Cuyne, the chief or Emperor of all the Mongols. The
_second_ in p. 42, is a relation taken from the Speculum Historiale of
Vincentius Beluacensis, lib. xxxii. ch. 2. of the mission of certain
friars, predicants and minorites in the same year, 1246, to the same
country; and in p. 59. of the same collection, there is a translation by
Hakluyt into antiquated English of this second account. From this second
narrative it appears, that Vincentius had received an account of the
journey of the second mission from Simon de St Quintin, a minorite friar
belonging to the party; and that he had worked up along with this, the
whole of the narrative which had been separately published by Carpini of
his journey; which indeed forms by far the larger and more interesting
portion of the work published by Vincentius. This latter edition, therefore
has been considered as sufficient for the present collection, because to
have given both would have been an unnecessary repetition; and it is here
translated from the Latin of Hakluyt, I. 42.

The object of this