consisted of a hundred and eighty thousand men, ambassadors came from the King of Kazan to Vasiley, to ratify the peace, and were still at Moscow at the time that I was there; and even at that time no permanent hope of peace was yet established, for Vasiley had, to the great prejudice of the people of Kazan, transferred to Novogorod the fairs which it had been the custom to hold near Kazan, in the Island of Merchants, and had proclaimed a heavy penalty upon any of his subjects who should in future go to the island for purposes of merchandize, in the hope that this removal of the fair might prove a great inconvenience to the people of Kazan; and that being prevented from buying salt, which they received in large quantities from the Russians at that fair alone, they might be induced to surrender. It happened, however, that by the removal of a fair of this sort, the Russians suffered as much inconvenience as the people of Kazan; for it produced a scarcity and dearness in many articles, which it had been the custom to import through the Caspian Sea from Persia and Armenia by the Volga from the emporium of Astrachan, and especially of the finer kinds of fish, amongst which was the beluga, which is taken in the Volga, both on this side and the other of Kazan.
Thus far I have been treating of the war which the Prince of Moscow waged against the Tartars of Kazan. I now return a second time to the general description of the Tartars, from which I had digressed.
Next to the Tartars of Kazan, we come to the Tartars known by the name of Nagai, who are located beyond the Volga, in the neighbourhood of the Caspian Sea, and dwell mainly by the shores of the river Jaick, which flows down from the province of Siberia. These people have no kings, but are governed by chiefs, or dukes. At the time that I was in Russia, three brothers gained possession of those duchies, and divided the provinces equally between them. The first of them, Schidack, had allotted to him the city of
