are three wolf-dogs (canes) which fight in the
field, each with three hundred lances." Timour
whistled. The knight had in his mind three
towns named Can de Roa, Can de Muño, and
Can de Zurita.  " There is a town in Spain
surrounded by fire and built upon water." " Is
there indeed," says Timour. " To be sure there
is," thinks Ruy Clavijo. " Do not the springs
bubble up from the ground in Madrid, and is not
that chief city among cities, begirt with walls of
fire flint? Go to, then: I am telling this
barbarian no lies."

Before we start with the judicious knight, we
will get from his English editor and translator,
Mr. Clements Markham, a few notes on the
true history of Timour the Tartar. That hero
left his own Memoirs written for the edification
of posterity, as well as a volume of Institutes.
Ruy Clavijo found in Timour's native town,
while Timour himself lived, the common report
that this great vanquisher of kings, though of a
noble family, set out but poorly furnished with
the world's goods, and acquired his name of
Tamerlane— which is, by interpretation, Timourlane
— from a wound in the leg that a shepherd
gave him when he was sheep-stealing. Tamburlaine,
therefore, was a nickname that none would
have dared to employ in the presence of this
Sultan Kamran Ameer Kutb-ud-Deen Timour
Kurkhan Sahib Keraun: all which, when turned
into English, means the Lord Successful
Commander Pole-star-of-the-Faith, Earth-shaker
(that is Timour), Of-the-Lineage-of-Sovereigns,
Master-of-the-Grand-Conjunctions— meaning
those of the planets, not the parts of speech.

Timour himself, with proper family pride,
says that he inherited of his father an incalculable
number of sheep and goats, cattle and
servants.  He was born in the green and flowery
town of Kesh, one of a race of shepherds
wandering much and living under tents. " At twelve
years of age," he says, "I fancied I perceived
in myself all the signs of greatness and wisdom,
and whoever came to visit me, I received with
great haughtiness and dignity." At eighteen
he rode, hunted, read the Koran, and played
chess. To the last he was a great chess-player;
and, for his own better contentment, added more
pieces to the board, in order to increase the
intricacy of the game. As he approached
manhood, he left off chess-playing, and made
a vow never to injure any living creature.
Once, when he had trodden upon an ant,
he was so deeply grieved, that he felt as if
his foot had lost its power. But, having
returned to his chess-playing both on the little
board and on the great board of the world, he
lived to crush under his foot thousands and
thousands of men, without more tender
concern than he might feel for the grains of sand
on which he trampled in the desert.

At the age of twenty, Timour received from
his father, certain tents, sheep, camels, and
servants; married the granddaughter of the ruler
of his tribe of Berlas, a lady who was his faithful
companion on the wild and perilous ascent
to supreme power; and presently plunged into
all the anarchy of Asiatic politics, where power
was always to the strong and the unscrupulous.
Once, when his other comrades had been
slaughtered, he was reduced to the company of his
wife and seven surviving followers, in the desert
of Khiva. A shepherd gave to the fugitives
part of a goat, which they roasted between
stones, and, says Timour, "we enjoyed
ourselves exceedingly." " Surely," said Heu Aljay
Turkhan Aga, the devoted wife, " surely our
fortunes are now arrived at the lowest point."
But after a few weeks' wandering, a lower point
was touched, when Timour and his wife, seized
by a troop of wild Toorkmans, were confined for
two months in a wretched cow-house full of fleas
and other vermin. From that point, the tide
turned which bore the adventurer up to his high
flood as lord of Asia.

He was a man who made his way by going to
war for an idea. " If," he says in his Institutes,
"in any kingdom, tyranny and oppression and
iniquity shall prevail, it is the duty of a prince,
from a respect to justice and the law, to expel
and extirpate the authors of that iniquity and to
assault that kingdom. It is the duty of a
victorious king to bring under his authority every
kingdom where the people are oppressed by
their rulers. Thus I have delivered Khorassan,
and purified the kingdoms of Fars, and Irak, and
Shaum."

Now let us travel to him in the train of Ruy
Clavijo. We embark in a carrack at the port of
St. Mary, near Cadiz, with our train and with
the marvellously pictured tapestry, the falcons
and the other gifts that we take with us from
the King of Spain to the great Tartar. Clavijo
describes all the places visited upon the way.
For us, silence is easy till we reach Constantinople,
rich in relics, upon which the pious traveller
dwells with all the sincere faith that
characterised the reports of Sir John Mandeville
concerning relics in the Holy Land. Among
other marvels, there was, in a convent of old
ladies called Omnipotens, "a stone of many
colours, on which it was said that our Lord was
placed when He was taken down from the cross.
On it were the tears of the three Marys . . .
and these tears looked fresh, as if they had just
fallen." We leave Cadiz in May of the year fourteen
hundred and three, and it is Tuesday, the
thirteenth of November, before we can find at
Pera a vessel willing to brave the wintry storms
of the Black Sea in taking us along its southern
coast to Trebizond. On Wednesday, at the hour
of mass, we make sail in a galiot commanded by
a Genoese, the carrack bearing company. In
the middle of the night we enter the great sea
and push on, hugging the shore. On Friday
night, in one of the wild storms which this sea
brews to perfection, the carrack is a wreck
ashore, and the galiot also is aground. In the
lulls of the tempest, Timour's presents are
landed and piled in a heap beside the wild waves.
Very soon after that is done, the galiot goes to
pieces. We find another carrack that will take us
back to Pera, and, after an absence of eight
days, we re-enter that city. There we remain