We Were Told That We Should Have To Travel Fifteen Days Farther
Before Meeting With Any Other Inhabitants.
With these people we drank
cosmos, and we presented them in return with a basket of fruits and
biscuit; and they gave us eight oxen and a goat, and a vast number of
bladders full of milk, to serve as provision during our long journey.
But
by changing our oxen, we were enabled in ten days to attain the next
station, and through the whole way we only found water in some ditches, dug
on purpose, in the vallies, and in two small rivers. From leaving the
province of Casaria, we traveled directly eastwards, having the sea of
Azoph on our right hand, and a vast desert on the north, which, in some
places, is twenty days journey in breadth, without mountain, tree, or even
stone; but it is all excellent pasture. In this waste the Comani, called
Capchat[2], used to feed their cattle. The Germans called these people
Valani, and the province Valania; but Isidore terms the whole country, from
the Tanais, along the Paulus Maeotis, Alania. This great extent would
require a journey of two months, from one end to the other, even if a man
were to travel post as fast as the Tartars usually ride, and was entirely
inhabited by the Capchat Comanians; who likewise possessed the country
between the Tanais, which divides Europe from Asia, and the river Edil or
Volga, which is a long ten days journey. To the north of this province of
Comania Russia is situate, which is all over full of wood, and reaches from
the north of Poland and Hungary, all the way to the Tanais or Don. This
country has been all wasted by the Tartars, and is even yet often plundered
by them.
The Tartars prefer the Saracens to the Russians, because the latter are
Christians: and when the Russians are unable to satisfy their demands for
gold and silver, they drive them and their children in multitudes into the
desert, where they constrain them to tend their flocks and herds. Beyond
Russia is the country of Prussia, which the Teutonic knights have lately
subdued, and they might easily win Russia likewise, if they so inclined;
for if the Tartars were to learn that the sovereign Pontiff had proclaimed
a crusade against them, they would all flee into their solitudes.
[1] From this circumstance it is obvious, that the journey had been
hitherto confined to Casaria, or the Crimea, and that he had now
reached the lines or isthmus of Precop. - E.
[2] In the English translation of Hakluyt, this word is changed to Capthak,
and in the collection of Harris to Capthai; it is probably the
Kiptschak of the Russians. - E.
SECTION XV.
Of our Distresses, and of the Comanian funerals.
In our journey eastwards we saw nothing but the earth and sky, having
sometimes the sea of Tanais within sight on our right hand, and sometimes
we saw the sepulchres in which the Comanians used to bury their dead, at
the distance of a league or two from the line of our journey.
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