by a report that a fatal miasma pervaded the air, particularly in summer. The knowledge of letters had not penetrated into this region, and all contracts and obligations were recorded by tallies of wood, as small accounts are still kept in Normandy, and other rude provinces of Europe.
Ignorance, priestcraft, and magic being of one family, and thriving by each other, are always found together. These savages, like Lear, had thrown "physic to the dogs;" and when attacked by disease preferred the priest or the magician to the doctor. The priests, hoping to drive disease out of their neighbour's body by admitting the Devil into their own, repaired, when called upon, to the chamber of the sick person; and there sung, danced, leaped, and raved, until a demon, in the language of the initiated, or, in other words, weariness, seized upon them, when they discontinued their violent gestures, and consented to be interrogated. Their answer, of course, was, that the patient had offended some god, who was to be propitiated with sacrifice, which consisted partly in offering up a portion of the patient's blood, not to the goddess Phlebotomy, as with us, but to some member of the Olympian synod whose fame has not reached posterity. In addition to this, a certain number of rams with black heads were sacrificed, their blood sprinkled in the air for the benefit of the gods, and a great number of candles having been lighted up, and the house thoroughly perfumed with incense and wood of aloes, the priests sat down with their wives and families to dinner; and if after all this the sick man would persist in dying, it was no fault of theirs. Destiny alone was to blame.
The next journey which Marco Polo undertook, after his return from Tibet, was into the kingdom of Mangi, or Southern China, subdued by the arms of the khan in 1269. Fanfur, the monarch, who had reigned previous to the irruption of the Mongols, is
