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Being aware that I should not be able to meet with any person to serve us at the place we were going to, I used the precaution to hire nine men from Kaffa, to assist the mariners of our vessel, and to procure provisions for us in our journey through Georgia and Mingrelia.
Kumania and Gazzaria, here said to be provinces of the Crimea, or island of Kaffa, must have been small districts of that peninsula, inhabited by tribes of the Kumanians and Gazzarians of the country between the sea of Asof and the mouths of the Wolga, now frequently called the Cuban Tartary.
Immediately after the downfall of Constantinople the Turks placed a fleet upon the Black Sea and attacked the colonies on the north coast at Kaffa, Soldaia, and Tana, and on the south at Trebizond and other ports. One after another these cities were placed under tribute; repeated battles destroyed their possessions; their population was enslaved and their property plundered.
The sovereign of this country is called Bendian, or Dadian, and is in possession of two fortified towns near the sea, one of which is called Vathi, or Badias, and the name of the other is Savastopol . Besides these he has several other castles and fortified rocks. The whole country is stony and barren, and millet is the only kind of grain that it produces. They get their salt from Kaffa.
The person mentioned before by Contarini as a messenger from Venice, and whom he met with at Kaffa, was named on that occasion Paulus Omnibamus, totally dissimilar from the name in this part of the text.
Then, crossing the Black Sea, he visited the Crimea, Kaffa, and Bulgar, a town of sufficiently high latitude for the unequal length of day and night to be very marked; and at last he reached Astrakhan, at the mouth of the Volga, where the Khan of Tartary lived during the winter months.
By the advice of my landlord I kept myself very much concealed, and employed my interpreter and Augustin of Pavia, whom I had brought with me from Kaffa because he understood a little Persian, to purchase our provisions, in which employment they were exposed to much ill treatment, and were often in hazard of their lives.
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