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Updated: June 20, 2025
From this time Genoa declined in power, while Venice waxed stronger and more haughty. The conquest of Constantinople by the Turks, followed rapidly by the expulsion of the Genoese from Trebizond, Sinope, Kaffa, and Azov, was the end of the commercial prosperity of the Ligurian Republic in the East. The Black Sea and Marmora were now Turkish lakes.
The coffee-tree is not found in the primeval forests, but in plantations, and even there it is a guest, for its native country is Kaffa in Abyssinia, and coffee came from Arabia to Europe through Constantinople. Now Brazil produces three-fourths of all the world's coffee, and in all thousands of millions of pounds of coffee are consumed yearly.
We have already seen that it was the 16th of that month when Contarini arrived at Kaffa. Much confusion has occurred in the dates of this journey, which we have no means of correcting, and must, therefore, be contented with them as they are E. The names of places in this journal are so corrupted as to be often quite unintelligible.
The name Bosporus was properly applied to the long narrow channel, now called the Straits of Kaffa or Yenikalé, which unites the Black Sea and the Mæotis or Sea of Azoff. Bosporus was also a name of Pantikapæum, one of the chief towns of the Bosporus. There was a series of Greek kings of the Bosporus, extending from B.C. 430 to B.C. 304, whose names are known; and there may have been others.
After having run many risks in our journey, we here learnt a piece of most afflictive news, that the Turks had taken possession of Kaffa or Theodosia in the Crimea, by which we were deprived of our last resource, and shut out apparently from every hope of continuing our voyage homewards.
Their raids in Russian and Polish territory ensured, among other advantages, a regular and plentiful supply of slaves, which formed the chief article of export from Kaffa the modern Theodosia and from the other seaports of the coast.
This takes place in all the towns of the peninsula, but especially in Kaffa."* * Michalonis Litvani, "De moribus Tartarorum Fragmina," X., Basilliae, 1615.
The Armenian who had joined us at Kaffa, under pretence of being an ambassador from Uzun-Hassan to the Pope, was recognized by the inhabitants of this village as an impostor and a notorious robber, and many were astonished how we had escaped from his machinations: I got rid of him therefore immediately, and made him restore me a horse which I had lent him for the journey; after which I procured a priest of an honest character to conduct me to Tauris.
Their principal drink is beer; they have some corn and wine, but in very small quantities; boiled millet being their ordinary food, which is a very poor kind of nourishment. They sometimes procure wine and salted fish from Trebisond, and import salt from Kaffa, without which they could not exist. Their only productions consist in a small quantity of hemp and wax.
In 1461 Trebizond was captured; in 1500 Kaffa was finally conquered and the whole Christian population, after many sufferings, carried off to live as a subject race in a suburb of Constantinople. In 1499 and 1500 Venice lost almost all the rest of her possessions.
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