ears.
During the reign of his father in 1254, accompanied by his wife and child,
he travelled to the court of Mangu-khan, the great sovereign of the Tartars
or Mongals, for the purpose of obtaining an abatement of the tribute which
had been imposed by these conquerors upon his country, and appears to have
been successful in his negotiations. His journey into the east took place
in the same year in which Rubruquis was on his return; and while at the
court or leskar of Sartach, he was of material service to two of the
attendants of Rubruquis, who had been left at that station; and who but for
his interference must have perished by famine, or would have been reduced
to slavery. Forster asserts that Haitho met with Rubruquis, who was then on
his return home; but we have already seen, in the account of the travels of
Rubruquis, that the two travellers did not meet.

In the year 1305, when he must have become very old, Haitho became a monk
of the Praemonstratensian order at Episcopia in Cyprus. He afterwards went
to Poitou in France, where he dictated in French to Nicholas Salconi, a
history of the events which had occurred in the east from the first
commencement of the conquests of the Tartars or Mongals, including the
reigns of Zingis-khan and his successors, to Mangu-khan inclusively; and a
particular narrative of the history of his own country, Armenia Minor, from
the reign of Haitho I. to that of Leon II. both inclusive. This account
Salconi translated into Latin in 1307, by order of the reigning Pope.

The travels of Haitho being perfectly contemporary with those of Rubruquis,
are not sufficiently interesting to be here inserted; and the historical
part of his relations have no connection with the plan of this work, which
it would swell beyond due bounds: But the following brief account of his
geographical description of the east, as it existed in the thirteenth
century, and as abstracted by J. R. Forster, in his Voyages and Discoveries
in the North, have been deemed worthy of insertion, together with the
observations or commentaries of that ingenious author.

[1] Forst. Hist. of Voy. and Disc. in the North, p. 113.

SECTION II.

_Geographical Notices of the East in the Thirteenth Century, by Haitho._

Sec. 1. The empire of _Kathay_ is one of the most extensive, most opulent, and
most populous in the world, and is entirely situated on the sea coast. The
inhabitants have a very high notion of their own superior