The accounts of India and China by the two Mahomedan travellers have been already noticed:  between the period of their journey, and the embassies and missions to which we have just alluded, the only account of the East which we possess is derived from the work of Benjamin, a Jew of Tudela in Spain.  It is doubted whether he visited all the places he describes:  his object was principally to describe those places where the Jews resided in great numbers.

After describing Barcelona as a place of great trade, frequented by merchants from Greece, Italy, and Alexandria, and a great resort of the Jews, and giving a similar character of Montpelier and Genoa, he proceeds to the East.  The inhabitants of Constantinople being too lazy to carry on commerce themselves, the whole trade of this city, which is represented as surpassing all others, except Bagdad, in wealth, was conducted by foreign merchants, who resorted to it from every part of the world by land and sea.  New Tyre was a place of considerable traffic, with a good harbour:  glass and sugar were its principal exports.  The great depot for the produce and manufactures of India, Persia, Arabia, &c., was an island in the Persian Gulf.  He mentions Samarcand as a place of considerable importance, and Thibet as the country where the musk animal was found.  But all beyond the Persian Gulf he describes in such vague terms, that little information can be gleaned.  It is worthy of remark, that nearly all the Jews, whom he represents as very numerous in Thebes, Constantinople, Samarcand, &c., were dyers of wool:  in Thebes alone, there were 2000 workers in scarlet and purple.  After the conquest of the northern part of China by Genghis Khan, the city of Campion in Tangut seems to have been fixed upon by him as the seat of a great inland trade.  Linens, stuffs made of cotton, gold, silver, silks, and porcelain, were brought hither by the Chinese merchants, and bought by merchants from Muscovy, Persia, Armenia, &c.

In the years 1245, 1246, the pope sent ambassadors to the Tartar and Mogul khans:  of these Carpini has given us the most detailed account of his embassy, and of the route which he followed.  His journey occupied six months:  he first went through Bohemia, Silesia, and Poland, to Kiov, at that time the capital of Russia.  Thence he proceeded by the Dnieper to the Black Sea, till he arrived at the head quarters of the Khan Batou.  To him we are indebted for the first information of the real names of the four great rivers which water the south of Russia, the Dnieper, the Don, the Volga, and the Jaik.  He afterwards proceeded to the head quarters of another khan, on the eastern shores of the Caspian.  After passing a country where the famous Prester John is said to have reigned, he reached the end of his journey, the head quarters of the khan of the Moguls.  Besides the information derived from his own observations, he inserts in his narrative all he had collected; so that he may be regarded as the first traveller who brought to the knowledge of western Europe these parts of Asia; but though his travels are important to geography, they throw little light on the commerce of these countries.