In an ill hour indeed, for the king and his people, was that battle begun, so many of them were slain therein. And when they had continued fighting till midday the king’s troops could stand against the Tartars no longer; but felt that they were defeated, and turned and fled. And when the Tartars saw them routed they gave chase, and hacked and slew so mercilessly that it was a piteous sight to see. But after pursuing a while they gave up, and returned to the wood to catch the elephants that had run away, and to manage this they had to cut down great trees to bar their passage. Even then they would not have been able to take them without the help of the king’s own men who had been taken, and who knew better how to deal with the beasts than the Tartars did. The elephant is an animal that hath more wit than any other; but in this way at last they were caught, more than 200 of them. And it was from this time forth that the Great Kaan began to keep numbers of elephants. So thus it was that the king aforesaid was defeated by the sagacity and superior skill of the Tartars as you have heard. NOTE 1.—_Nescradin_ for Nesradin, as we had _Bascra_ for Basra. This NÁSRUDDIN was apparently an officer of whom Rashiduddin speaks, and whom he calls governor (or perhaps commander) in Karájáng. He describes him as having succeeded in that command to his father the Sayad Ajil of Bokhara, one of the best of Kúblái’s chief Ministers. Nasr-uddin retained his position in Yun-nan till his death, which Rashid, writing about 1300, says occurred five or six years before. His son Bayan, who also bore the grandfather’s title of Sayad Ajil, was Minister of Finance under Kúblái’s successor; and another son, Ḥálá, is also mentioned as one of the governors of the province of Fu-chau. (See _Cathay_, pp. 265, 268, and _D’Ohsson_, II. 507–508.) Nasr-uddin (_Nasulating_) is also frequently mentioned as employed on this frontier by the Chinese authorities whom Pauthier cites. [Na-su-la-ding [Nasr-uddin] was the eldest of the five sons of the Mohammedan Sai-dien-ch’i shan-sze-ding, Sayad Ajil, a native of Bokhara, who died in Yun-nan, where he had been governor when Kúblái, in the reign of Mangu, entered the country. Nasr-uddin “has a separate biography in ch. cxxv of the _Yuen-shi_. He was governor of the province of Yun-nan, and distinguished himself in the war against the southern tribes of _Kiao-chi_ (Cochin-China) and _Mien_ (Burma). He died in 1292, the father of twelve sons, the names of five of which are given in the biography, viz. _Bo-yen-ch’a-rh_ [Bayan], who held a high office, Omar, Djafar, Hussein, and Saadi.” (_Bretschneider, Med. Res._ I. 270–271). Mr. E. H. Parker writes in the _China Review_, February–March, 1901, pp. 196–197, that the Mongol history states that amongst the reforms of Nasr-uddin’s father in Yun-nan, was the introduction of coffins for the dead, instead of burning them.—H. C.]