Leaves from the archive
Friar William's journey to the Mongol court, with Carpini and Benedict the Pole
1253
Editor’s introduction
Some Mongol houses were never taken down but rode on huge carts. Rubruck measured one cart himself and counted the oxen. The axle was as thick as a ship's mast and a driver stood in the doorway of the house. On the next pages he describes felt-covered chests on carts and a rich man's camp of one or two hundred carts.
In their own words
A house thirty feet wide, pulled by twenty-two oxen
I myself once measured the width between the wheel-tracks of a cart xx feet, and when the house was on the cart it projected beyond the wheels on either side v feet at least. I have myself counted to one cart xxii oxen drawing one house, eleven abreast across the width of the cart, and the other eleven before them.
About Tartars (Mongols of the Golden Horde)
Keep in mind
Rockhill thinks these carts were exceptionally large ones.
