without let or hindrance, drinking turbid or muddy water when blood fails them (as beverage).... They know no other language than their own, which no one else knows; for until now there has been no access to them, nor did they go forth (from their own country); ... They wander about with their flocks and their wives, who are taught to fight like men.... It is believed that these Tartars, of cursed memory, are of the ten tribes who, having forsaken the Mosaic law, followed after the golden calves, and whom Alexander the Macedonian endeavoured at first to shut up in the rugged mountains of the Caspians with bitumen-covered rocks.[1241] When he saw that the undertaking exceeded the power of man, he invoked the might of the God of Israel, and the tops of the mountains came together, and an inaccessible and impassable place was made.... It is written in sacred history that they shall come out toward the end of the world, and shall make a great slaughter of men. There arises, however, a doubt whether the Tartars now coming from there be really they, for they do not use the Hebrew tongue, neither do they know the laws of Moses, nor have they laws, nor are they governed by them....” Despite the impression of extreme ferocity reflected in this passage, after the warlike ardor of conquest had somewhat subsided, the Mongols showed themselves not intolerant in their attitude toward strangers and not unreceptive of foreign influence. The immediate result of their withdrawal from Hungary to Russia and the consequent removal of the direct menace to Central Europe was the dispatch of Christian ecclesiastics as ambassadors to the Mongol lords. Rumors had come to Europe that these nomads from the Far East were monotheists, and hope sprang up that they might be converted to Roman Catholic Christianity and used to offset the reviving Moslem power menacing the Christian states of the Holy Land.[1242] The origin of the rumors which gave rise to this elusive hope is to be sought in the fact that the Nestorian form of Christianity had been firmly established among some of the Mongol tribes north of the Great Wall of China and was represented even in their ruling dynasty. Furthermore, these rumors seemed to confirm and be confirmed by the reports that had been in circulation since the twelfth century of the existence of a great Christian kingdom of Prester John in the remote interior of Asia.[1243] THIRTEENTH-CENTURY JOURNEYS