which was still more magnificent.  By this fire, 250 houses were destroyed, and several men and women lost their lives[6].  The emperor and his Amirs did not consider that this chastisement fell upon them for being infidels.  On the contrary, the emperor went to an idol temple[7], where he said on his knees, “The GOD of Heaven is angry with me, and therefore hath burned my palace.  Yet have I done no evil; for I have neither offended my father nor my mother, nor can I be charged with the exercise of any tyranny on my people.”

The emperor was so deeply affected by these untoward circumstances, that he fell sick, and the prince his son assumed the administration of the government, and gave the ambassadors an audience of leave[8]; after which, they received no farther subsistence from the court, till their departure.  They left Kham-balik on the fifteenth of the month Jomada-al-awal, accompanied by certain dajis from the court; and they were lodged and treated with all necessaries on their return, in the same manner as they had been on their journey to court.  They arrived on the first of Rajeb at the city of Nikian[9], where the magistrates came out to meet them, but did not search their baggage, as is customary there, as they had an express order from the emperor to the contrary.  On the day after their arrival at that place, they were magnificently feasted.  On the fifth of Shaaban, thirty-five days afterwards, they reached the river Karamuran, Whang-ho, or Hoang-ho; and on the twenty-fifth of that month arrived at Kamju[10], where they had left their servants, and heavy baggage; where every thing that they had committed to the custody of the Kathayan officers, when on their journey to the capital, was faithfully restored.  After remaining seventy-five days in this place, they resumed their journey, and came soon afterwards to Nang-tschieu, or Nang-chew[11].  At this place, or rather at Sa-chew, they met with ambassadors from Ispahan and Shiras in Persia, on their way to Khambalik, who told them that they had met with many difficulties on their journey.

As the roads through the country of the Mongals were very unsafe, owing to confusions and civil wars among the hordes, they remained ten months at So-chew, whence they set out at full moon in the month of Moharram, of the year 825 of the Hegira[12], and came in a few days to the Karaul at the pass leading into the desert, where their baggage was searched.  Leaving this place on the nineteenth of Moharram, on purpose to avoid the obstacles and dangers they were likely to encounter, on account of intestine war among the tribes of the Mongals, they took the road through the desert[13], where they suffered much distress on account of the scarcity of water.  They got out from the desert on the sixteenth of Rabiya-al-awal, and arrived at the city of Khoten[14] on the ninth of Jomada-al-akher.  Continuing their journey from thence, they came to the city of Kashgar[15] on the sixth of Rajeb.  On the twenty-first of the same month, the ambassadors separated a little way beyond the city of Endkoien[16], some taking the road towards Samarkand, and the rest directing their way for Badakshan.  Those of Shah Rokh arrived at the castle of Shadman on the twenty-first of Shaaban; at Balkh on the first of Ramazan; and on the tenth of that month at Herat, the residence of their sovereign.