Three young men, Europeans, whom Rubruquis had left behind, had nearly been reduced to bondage under the same pretext, but they had not suffered personal ill-treatment. The kind offices of some influential Armenians had staved off the evil day, and the timely arrival of the long-missing envoy secured them their freedom. Rubruquis now joined Baatu’s court, which was journeying westward to a town called Sarai, on the eastern bank of the Volga; but the progress of the encumbered Tartars was so slow that he left them after a month’s companionship, and pushed on with his party, till he reached Sarai on the feast of All Saints. After this the country was almost an unbroken desert; but our traveller once more fell in with one of his Tartar friends, a son of Sartach, who was out upon a hawking expedition, and gave him a guard to protect him from various fierce Mahometan tribes that infested the neighborhood. Here ended his travels in Tartary proper; but his hardships were far from ended yet. Through Armenia and the territories of Turkish and Koordish princes he journeyed slowly and uncomfortably, in dread of the violence of his own guides and guards, as well as of the insults of the populations whose country he traversed. He says these delays “arose in part from the difficulty of procuring horses, but chiefly because the guide chose to stop, often for three days together, in one place, for his own business; and, though much dissatisfied, I durst not complain, as he might have slain me and those with me, or sold us all for slaves, and there was none to hinder it.”