place; but still he sat sure, poised with his own gravity. Not
did the enmity of Henry King of Cyprus much trouble him,
who challenged the Principality of Antioch, as next of kinne
to the Prince deceased: For Reinold met and defeated him in
battel, and bestowed Antioch on Frederick, base sonne to
Frederick the Emperour.
But that which kept both Christians and Turks in aw, and
made them willing mutually to observe the truce, was the fear
of the Tartars, a fierce nation, which now had their first flight
out of their own nest into the neighbouring countreys.
These Tartarians, anciently called Scythians, inhabit the
Northern part of Asia, a countrey never conquered by any of
the Monarchs, priviledged from their victorious arms chiefly
by its own barrennesse: For except souldiers were ambitious of
hunger and cold, here is nothing to countervail their pains of an
invasion▪ yea, no meat to maintain them. It is true, rhubarb the
best of drugs groweth in this the worst of countreys: But souldi∣ers
seek rather for food then physick when they invade a coun∣trey.
A greater part of their land is undiscovered, though map∣makers,
rather then they will have their maps naked and bald,
do periwig them with false hair, and fill up the vacuum (especi∣ally
towards the North) with imaginary places of Vng, and
Gog, and the plains of Bargu: So true it is what one saith wittily
in the Comedie, That Phantastes the servant of Geographus
travelled further beyond the Arctick circle then ever his master
durst.
If it be surest to follow the most, the stream of writers make
it called Tartaria from the river Tartar: but Europe and Asia
will by wofull experience justifie the etymologie, if deduced
from Tartarus, Hell. For when the spring-tides of this nation
overflowed the banks, hell might seem to have broken loose,
and to have sent so many devils abroad.
As for those that count them the off-spring of the ten tribes of
Israel, which Salmanaser led away captive, because Tatari or
Totari signifieth in the Hebrew and Syriack tongue, a residue or
remnant, learned men have sufficiently confuted it. And surely
it seemeth a forced and overstrained deduction, to farrefetch the
name of Tartars from an Hebrew word, a language so farre
distant from them. But no more hereof: because perchance
herein the womans reason hath a masculine truth; and the Tar∣tarians
are called so, because they are called so. It may be, curi∣ous
Etymologists (let them lose their wages who work in diffi∣cult
trifles) seek to reap what was never sown, whilest they study
to make those words speak reason, which are onely voc••s ad pla∣citum,
imposed at pleasure.
Under their new name Tartarians, they keep their old nature