(July 22), they reached at last the imperial camp called
_Sira Orda_ (i.e. Yellow Pavilion), near Karakorum and the Orkhon
river--this stout-hearted old man having thus ridden something like 3000
m. in 106 days.

Since the death of Okkodai the imperial authority had been in
_interregnum_. Kuyuk, Okkodai's eldest son, had now been designated to
the throne; his formal election in a great _Kurultai_, or diet of the
tribes, took place while the friars were at Sira Orda, along with 3000
to 4000 envoys and deputies from all parts of Asia and eastern Europe,
bearing homage, tribute and presents. They afterwards, on the 24th of
August, witnessed the formal enthronement at another camp in the
vicinity called the Golden Ordu, after which they were presented to the
emperor. It was not till November that they got their dismissal, bearing
a letter to the pope in Mongol, Arabic and Latin, which was little else
than a brief imperious assertion of the khan's office as the scourge of
God. Then commenced their long winter journey homeward; often they had
to lie on the bare snow, or on the ground scraped bare of snow with the
traveller's foot. They reached Kiev on the 9th of June 1247. There, and
on their further journey, the Slavonic Christians welcomed them as risen
from the dead, with festive hospitality. Crossing the Rhine at Cologne,
they found the pope still at Lyons, and there delivered their report and
the khan's letter.

Not long afterwards Friar Joannes was rewarded with the archbishopric
of Antivari in Dalmatia, and was sent as legate to St Louis. The date of
his death may be fixed, with the help of the _Franciscan Martyrology_
and other authorities, as the 1st of August 1252; hence it is clear that
John did not long survive the hardships of his journey.

He recorded the information that he had collected in a work, variously
entitled in the MSS. _Historia Mongalorum quos nos Tartaros appellamus_,
and _Liber Tartarorum_, or _Tatarorum_. This treatise is divided into
eight ample chapters on the country, climate, manners, religion,
character, history, policy and tactics of the Tatars, and on the best
way of opposing them, followed by a single (ninth) chapter on the
regions passed through. The book thus answers to its title. Like some
other famous medieval itineraries it shows an entire absence of a
traveller's or author's egotism, and contains, even in the last chapter,
scarcely any personal narrative. Carpini was not only an ol