"Since we have begun to speak of the Tartars, I have much to tell you about them. They spend the winter in steppes and warm regions where there is good grazing and pasturage for their beasts. In summer they live in cool regions, among mountains and valleys, where they find water and woodland as well as pasturage. A further advantage is that in cooler regions there are no horse-flies of gad-flies or similar pests to annoy them and their beasts. They spend two or three months climbing steadily and grazing as they go, because if they confined their grazing to one spot there would not be grass enough for the multitude of their flocks.
    "They have circular houses made of wood and covered with felt, which they carry about with them on four-wheeled wagons wherever they go. For the framework of rods is so neatly and skillfully constructed that it is light to carry. And every time they unfold their house and set it up, the door is always facing south. They also have excellent two-wheeled carts covered with black felt, of such good design that if it rained all the time the rain would never wet anything in the cart. These are drawn by oxen and camels. And in these carts they carry their wives and children and all they need in the way of utensils.
    "And I assure you that the womenfolk buy and sell and do all that is needful for their husbands and households. For the men do not bother themselves about anything but hunting and warfare and falconry. They live on meat and milk and game and on Pharaoh's rats, which are abundant everywhere in the steppes. They have no objection to eating the flesh of horses and dogs and drinking mares' milk. In fact they eat flesh of any sort. Not for anything in the world would one of them touch another's wife; they are too well assured that such a deed is wrongful and disgraceful. The wives are true and loyal to their husbands and are very good at their household tasks. Even if there are as many as ten or twenty of them in one household, they live together in a concord and unity beyond praise, so that you would never hear a harsh word spoken. They all devote themselves to their various tasks and the care of the children, who are held among them in common. Their mode of marriage is such that any man may take as many wives as he pleases, even up to a hundred, if he is able to support them. The husband gives dowry to his wife's mother; the wife gives nothing to the husband. You must understand that the first wife is reckoned the best and enjoys the highest status. Because they have so many wives, they have more children than other men. They may marry their cousins; and, when a father dies, the eldest son marries his father's wives, excluding his own mother. He may also marry his brother's wife, if the brother dies. When they take a wife, they hold a great wedding celebration.
    "I will now tell you of their religion. They say that there is a High God, exalted and heavenly to whom they offer daily prayer with thurible and incense, but only for a sound understanding and good health. They also have a god of their own whom they call Natigai. They say that he is an earthly god and watches over their children, their beasts, and their crops. They pay him great reverence and honour; for each man has one in his house. They make this god of felt and cloth and keep him in their house; and they also make the god's wife and children. They set his wife at his left hand and his children in front. And they treat them with great reverence. When they are about to have a meal, they take a lump of fat and smear the god's mouth with it, and the mouths of his wife and children. Then they take some broth and pour it outside the door of the house. When they have done this, they say that their god and his household have had their share. After this they eat and drink. You should know that they drink mare's milk; but they subject it to a process that makes it like white wine and very good to drink, and they call it koumiss.
    "As to their costume, the rich wear cloth of gold and silk and rich aurs-sable and ermine and miniver and fox. And all their trappings are very fine and very costly. Their weapons are bows and swords and clubs; but they rely mainly on their bows, for they are excellent archers. On their backs they wear an armour of buffalo hide or some other leather which is very tough.
    "They are stout fighters, excelling in courage and hardihood. Let me explain how it is that they can endure more than any other men. Often enough, if need be, they will go or stay for a whole month without provisions, drinking only the milk of a mare and eating wild game of their own taking. Their horses, meanwhile, support themselves by grazing, so that there is no need to carry barley or straw. They are very obedient to their masters. In case of need they will stay all night on horseback under arms, while their mount goes on steadily cropping the grass. They are of all men in the world the best able to endure exertion and hardship and the least costly to maintain and therefore the best adapted for conquering territory and overthrowing kingdoms.
    "Now the plan on which their armies are marshalled is this. When a lord of the Tartars goes out to war with a following of 100,000 horsemen, he has them organized as follows. He has one captain in command of every ten, one of every hundred, one of every thousand and one of every ten-thousand, so that he never needs to consult with more than ten men. In the same way each commander of ten-thousand or a thousand or a hundred consults only with his ten immediate subordinates, and each man is answerable to his own chief. When the supreme commander wishes to send someone on some operation, he orders the commander of ten-thousand to give him a thousand men; the latter orders the captain of a thousand to contribute his share. So the order is passed down, each commander being required to furnish his quota towards the thousand. At each stage it is promptly received and executed. For they are all obedient to the word of command more than any other people in the world. You should know that the unit of 100,000 is called a tuk, that of 10,000 a tomaun, and there are corresponding terms for the thousands, the hundreds, and the tens.
    "When an army sets out on some operation, whether it be in the plains or in the mountains, 200 men are sent two days' ride in advance as scouts, and as many to the rear and on the flanks; that is four scouting parties in all. And this they do so that the army cannot be attacked without warning.
    "When they are going on a long expedition, they carry no baggage with them. They each carry two leather flasks to hold the milk they drink and a small pot for cooking meat. They also carry a small tent to shelter them from the rain. In case of need, they will ride a good ten days' journey without provisions and without making a fire, living only on the blood of their horses; for every rider pierces a vein of his horse and drinks the blood. They also have their dried milk, which is solid like paste; and this is how they dry it. First they bring the milk to the boil. At the appropriate moment they skim off the cream that floats on the surface and put it in another vessel to be made into butter, because so long as it remained the milk could not be dried. Then they stand the milk in the sun and leave it to dry. When they are going on an expedition, they take about ten pounds of this milk; and every morning they take out about a half of a pound of it and put it in a small leather flask, shaped like a gourd, with as much water as they please. Then, while they ride, the milk in the flask dissolves into a fluid, which they drink. And this is their breakfast.
    "When they join battle with their enemies, these are the tactics by which they prevail. They are never ashamed to have recourse to flight. They manoeuvre freely, shooting at the enemy, now from this quarter, now from that. They have trained their horses so well that they wheel this way or that as quickly as a dog would do. When they are pursued and take to flight, they fight as well and as effectively as when they are face to face with the enemy. When they are fleeing at top speed, they twist round with their bows and let fly their arrows to such good purpose that they kill the horses of the enemy and the riders too. When the enemy thinks he has routed and crushed them, then he is lost; for he finds his horse killed and not a few of his men. As soon as the Tartars decide they have killed enough of the pursuing horses and horsemen, they wheel round and attack and acquit themselves so well and so courageously that they gain a complete victory. By these tactics they have already won many battles and conquered many nations.
    "All that I have told you concerns the usages and customs of the genuine Tartars. But nowadays their stock has degenerated. Those who live in Cathay have adopted the manners and customs of the idolaters and abandoned their own faith, while those who live in the Levant have adopted the manners of the Saracens.
    "Let me tell you next of the Tartar fashion of maintaining justice. For a petty theft, not amounting to a capital offence, the culprit receives seven strokes of the rod, or seventeen or twenty-seven or thirty-seven or forty-seven, ascending thus by tens to 107 in proportion to the magnitude of his crime. And many die of this flogging. If the offender has stolen a horse or otherwise incurred the death penalty, he is chopped in two by the sword. If, however, he can afford to pay, and is prepared to pay nine times the value of what he has stolen, he escapes other punishment.
    "All the great lords, and other owners of flocks and herds, including horses, mares, camels, oxen, cows, and other large beasts, have them branded with their own mark. Then they turn them loose to graze on the plains and hillsides with no herdsman to guard them. If the herds intermingle, each beast is duly returned to the owner whose mark it bears. Their sheep and rams are entrusted to the care of shepherds. All their beasts are of great size and fat and exceedingly fine.
    "Here is another strange custom which I had forgotten to describe. You may take it for a fact that, when there are two men of whom one has had a male child who has died at the age of four, or what you will, and the other has had a female child who has also died, they arrange a marriage between them. They give the dead girl to the dead boy as a wife and draw up a deed of matrimony. Then they burn this deed, and declare that the smoke that rises into the air goes to their children in the other world and that they get wind of it and regard themselves as husband and wife. They hold a great wedding feast and scatter some of the food here and there and declare that that too goes to their children in the other world. And here is something else that they do. They draw pictures on paper of men in the guise of slaves, and of horses, clothes, coins, and furniture and then burn them; and they declare that all these become the possessions of their children in the next world. When they have done this, they consider themselves to be kinsfolk and uphold their kinship just as firmly as if the children were alive.
    " . . . You must know that after Chinghiz (Genghis) Khan the next ruler was Kuyuk Khan, the third Batu Khan, the fourth Altou Khan, the fifth Mongu Khan and the sixth Kubilai Khan, who is greater and more powerful than any of the others. For all the other five put together would not have such power as belongs to Kubilai. And here is a greater claim still, which I can confidently assert: that all the emperors of the world and all the kings of Christians and of Saracens combined would not possess such power or be able to accomplish so much as this same Kubilai, the Great Khan. And this I will clearly demonstrate to you in this book.
    "You should know that all the great lords who are of the lineage of Chinghiz (Genghis) Khan are conveyed for burial to a great mountain called Altai. When one of them dies, even if it be at a distance of a hundred days' journey from this mountain, he must be brought here for burial. And here is a remarkable fact: when the body of a Great Khan is being carried to this mountain--be it forty days' journey or more or less--all those who are encountered along the route by which the body is being conveyed are put to the sword by the attendants who are escorting it. 'Go!' they cry, 'and serve your lord in the next world.' For they truly believe that all those whom they put to death must go and serve the Khan in the next world. And they do the same thing with horses: when the Khan dies, they kill all his best horses, so that he may have them in the next world. It is a fact that, when Mongu Khan died, more than 20,000 men were put to death, having encountered his body on the way to burial."

The Travels of Marco Polo. Ronald Latham, trans.