tinople, over the Black Sea, through the Crimea,[1] and finally arrived after many difficulties in the district of the city of the Caraci, in the Gobi desert, where Mangu Khan was then residing. His accounts of the countries he passed through are more circumstantial than those of his predecessors, which were unknown to him. He introduces, however, a number of cities under names which cannot yet be identified. We have to thank him, among other things, for the first accounts collected from personal experience respecting China, which he derived from a Chinese ambassador in the Mongolian camp. Rubruquis tarried five months in the neighbourhood of Mangu Khan, and passed then by Sarai, Astrachan, and Derbent, through Georgia, Armenia, and Turcomania, across the Mediterranean to Cyprus, Antioch, and Tripoli, from which latter place he transmitted the narrative of his travels to the King of France. From this latter circumstance he is sometimes called William of Tripoli.
Sprengel says of these travels:—“Rubruquis, by his journal, certainly widely extended the knowledge of the period with respect to northern Asia and the countries around the Caspian and Black Seas; and it is the more valuable inasmuch as he has conveniently inserted all manner of useful observations,
- ↑ The following observation is made by Adelung in a note:— “Ruysbroeck spoke first of Goths in the Crimea, and Barbaro and Busbeck confirmed his accounts. It is known that no remains of them are to be found there at the present day, as Pallas informed me in 1810, in reply to my request for information thereupon.”
