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its religion alone is true, and careless of concealing its haughty contempt for all alien faiths; the other equally convinced in favour of its own creed but not equally aggressive in its declarations of infallibility. Colonel Yule remarks that Carpini and his companions were "the first to bring to western Europe the revived knowledge of a great and civilised nation lying in the extreme East upon the shores of the ocean;" but assuredly western Europe did not thereafter evince any disposition to apply the adjective "civilised" to the newly discovered nation.

Giovanni Carpini's mission can scarcely be called a proselytising expedition so much as a political. The former character may be assigned more correctly to the mission of Father William Rubruk and his three companions, who, as already noted, were sent by Louis XI. to spread Christianity among the Tartars. They left Constantinople on May 7, 1253, and were three years absent.

It was supposed that the Tartar commanding on the western frontier, Sartach, to whom Rubruk had to address himself first, was a Christian. But Rubruk found him a "besotted infidel." That epithet indicates the spirit of the Christian propagandists. A Nestorian who acted as the Tartar General's chief adviser, was regarded by Rubruk as "no better than a heretic," and the French King's envoy, when he entered the presence of the Khan Batu, fell on his knees and prayed for