bia and the Red Sea; but his names of places are
unintelligible.--E.

[26] Perhaps Asowan in upper Egypt, which is rendered probable by the
journey through the desert.--E.

[27] Harris considered Gana to mean Guinea; but it is probably Nigritia,
or the inland country of Africa, on the Niger or Joliba.--E.

[28] Perhaps Memphis, as he evidently alludes to the pyramids.--E.

[29] Kahira, or Cairo, called also Messir.--E.

[30] Elul contains from the middle of August to the middle of September and
Tisri from that to the middle of October. But the Nile begins to rise
in the middle of June, and returns to its usual level in October.--E.

[31] Of the Rabbinists or Talmudists.--E.

[32] This may possibly have been the Sarcophagus brought lately from
Alexandria, and deposited in the British museum, under the strange
idea of having been the tomb of Alexander. Benjamin seems to have
known nothing about the hieroglyphics, with which his tomb was
obviously covered.--E.

[33] This short commentary upon three words in that part of the travels of
Benjamin, which has been omitted in Harris, is extracted from Forster,
Hist of Voy. and Disc. in the North, p. 92, and shews the extreme
difficulty of any attempt to give an accurate edition of the whole
work, if that should be thought of, as it would require critical skill
not only in Hebrew, but in the languages of the different countries to
which the travels refer.--E.

CHAP. VI.

_Travels of an Englishman into Tartary, and thence into Poland, Hungary,
and Germany, in 1243_.[1]

This earliest remaining direct account of the Tartars, or Mongols receiving
that name, which is extremely short and inconclusive, is recorded by
Matthew Paris, in a letter from Yvo de Narbonne to the archbishop of
Bourdeaux, and is here given as a literary curiosity.

* * * * *

Provoked by the sins of the Christians, the Lord hath become as it were a
destroying enemy, and a dreadful avenger; having sent among us a
prodigiously numerous, most barbarous, and inhuman people, whose law is
lawless, and whose wrath is furious, even as the rod of God's anger,
overrunning and utterly ruining infinite countries, and cruelly destroying
every thing where they come with fire and sword. This present summer, that
nation which is called Tartars, leaving Hungary, which they had surprised
by treason, laid siege, with