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Updated: June 3, 2025
In these expeditions, the Gothic nation claimed a superior share of honor and danger; but the tribes that fought under the Gothic banners are sometimes distinguished and sometimes confounded in the imperfect histories of that age; and as the barbarian fleets seemed to issue from the mouth of the Tanais, the vague but familiar appellation of Scythians was frequently bestowed on the mixed multitude.
Tanais, springing from a fountain of great name in those parts, growing great near to his head, spreads itself at length very largely and makes a great lake; and then growing narrow again, doth so run for certain miles until it fall into another lake, which they call Ivan: and there hence, fetching a very crooked course, comes very near to the river Volga; but disdaining, as it were, the company of any other river, doth there turn itself again from Volga, and runs towards the south, and falls at last into the Lake of Moeotis.
At the region from the west shore of the Caspian, where the Iron-gate of Alexander is situated, now called Derbent, and from the mountains of the Alani, and along the Palus Moeotis, or sea of Azoph, into which the Tanais falls, to the northern ocean, was anciently called Albania; in which Isidore says, that there were dogs of such strength and fierceness, as to fight with bulls, and even to overcome lions, which I have been assured by several persons to be true; and even, that towards the northern ocean, they have dogs of such size and strength, that the inhabitants make them draw carts like oxen .
Thence up that river, and to the city of Novogrod, in the province of Resan, which now belongs to the great duke of Muscovy, in lat. 54° N. The goods were carried thence overland to the province of Sarmatia and the river Tanais or Don, which is the division between Europe and Asia.
On the north-east of Europe he gives an accurate description of the course of the Wolga; and further to the south, he lays down the course of the Tanais, much nearer what it really is than the course assigned it by Strabo.
Europe begins, as I have said before, at the Tanais, which has its source in the northern parts of the Riphean mountains , which are near the Sarmatic ocean; and this river then runs directly south, on the west side of Alexander's temples, to the nation of the Russians , where it runs into the fen called Maeotis, and thence it issues eastwards with a great stream, near the town called Theodosia, into the Euxine.
We arrived in good order at night on the banks of the river, and we rested every day at noon during the fifteen days of our journey, as we were now considered to be out of danger from any attack by the Tartars. I do not recollect the name of the emperor of the Tartars who inhabit this part of the country between the Wolga and the Tanais.
With even such a spirit did the proud Austrian Juno strive to array against her foe a coalition such as Europe had never seen. Nothing would content her but that the whole civilised world, from the White Sea to the Adriatic, from the Bay of Biscay to the pastures of the wild horses of the Tanais, should be combined in arms against one petty State.
The plains between the Volga and the Tanais were covered with the tents of the Alani, but their name and manners were diffused over the wide extent of their conquests; and the painted tribes of the Agathyrsi and Geloni were confounded among their vassals.
But now hauing spoken thus much of the said iourney, I will returne to the dominions of Moscouia, with other regions lying Eastward and South from the same, toward the mighty Empire of Cathay. But I will first speake somewhat briefly of the prouince of Rezan, and the famous riuer of Tanais.
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