116 CHKISTIANITY IN CHINA, ETC. of Ung-Khan on the other, and flung them into the midst of the assembly. After this they chanted some magic prayers, and soon the two fragments of wood, it is related *, set themselves in motion, and began a kind of combat, the vicissitudes of which the Tartar chiefs watched with intense anxiety. At length the bamboo of Temoutchin succeeded in placing itself across that of Ung-Khan, and paralysing its movements. This circumstance, continues Marco Polo, was of good augury for the troops of Temoutchin, who, therefore, advanced full of confidence and courage against the Keraites, and Unsf-Khan wa s routed, and had his head cut off by one of Temoutehin's officers. Thus vanished, in 1203, the kingdom of Prester John and the power of the Keraites. The principal Tartar chiefs, as is well known, have always borne, and still bear, the title of Khan ; and this word being somewhat difficult to pronounce from the guttural effort it re- quires, was found rather troublesome by Western tra- vellers who wished to speak of their relations with the Chief of the Tartars. They wrote by turns Chan, Caan, Ghan, Gehan, and finally John ; and the last mode of rendering the rough Tartar sound pleased them all the better, because it seemed, in the Middle Ages, quite na- tural to designate by the name of an Apostle a sovereign recently converted to Christianity. All the Khans of the Keraites, of course, bore the same title, and this seems to explain the astonishing longevity of this eternal Prester John, whom all European travellers in Asia never failed to meet with for at least two centuries.
- Voyages de Marco Polo, published by the Societc* de la Geo-
graphic, ch. liii. p. .349.
