44 
THE OX AND ITS KINDRED 
Bolemow, Wiskitki, and Msczezow, and northwards 
nearly to Sochaczew, was covered with a great forest, 
known either, from the village Jaktorow, as the 
Jaktorowka forest, or, from the neighbouring district 
of Wiskitki, as the Wiskitki forest. In the description 
of Masovia by Andreas Swiecicki, published at 
Warsaw in 1634, it is, however, referred to as 
Hectorea Silva (the Hectorean forest). It has now 
completely disappeared. This forest was the last 
refuge of the aurochs. It was visited by Swiecicki, 
who was notary of the district of Narew, in Masovia ; 
but he speaks only of bison, and these from another 
and distant forest, the Skwa forest, so named from the 
river Skwa, which lies between the rivers Pysz and 
Omulew, northwards of Narew. 
Fortunately a full account of the tur in the 
Jaktorowka forest has been preserved to us in the 
writings of Count, or Baron, Sigismund von Her- 
berstein or Herberstain (the name is spelt in both 
ways), who was a German diplomatist and historian, 
born at Wippach in i486, and who died at Vienna 
in 1566. As an envoy from Kaiser Maximilian and 
his successors, Kaiser Carl V and King Ferdinand, 
he had occasion to pay several visits to Russia and 
Poland. 
His first visit to Poland, to King Sigismund I, who 
at that time dwelt at Wilna, was undertaken from 
Moscow, in company with Count Wassilij Iwanow, 
during the years 15 16, 15 17, and 15 18; while the 
second, also from Moscow, occurred in the years 
1520 and 1527. In 1542 he again had occasion to 
visit Cracow in connection with the marriage of the 
Princess Elizabeth, the daughter of his sovereign, 
with Sigismund August, the Crown Prince of Poland ; 
