BIO Method employed at JLstracan for making 
as far as I know, lias never yet been described ; though 
Basil Valentin* is pretty right in what he says of it in 
general. It is one of those arts of the East, which, like 
that of the Turkey dye for cotton, the preparation of Rus- 
sia leather, isinglass, &c. have remained unknown and 
unemployed, not because they are kept secrets, but be- 
cause none of the European travellers ever took the trou- 
ble to learn them, and because the materials used are not 
so common and so cheap in Europe . It may be of some 
utility, therefore, if I here give a circumstantial descrip- 
tion of this art as it is practised at Astracan by the Tar- 
tars and Armenians, especially as the method of these 
people is perfectly similar to that used in Turkey, Persia, 
and various parts of Bucharia, and as the shagreen - 
makers of Astracan acknowledge that they obtained the 
process originally from Persia. 
All kinds of horses’ or asses’ skin, which have been 
dressed in such a manner as to appear grained, are by 
the Tartars called sauwer , by the Persians sogre , and 
by the Turks sagri, from which the Europeans have 
made shagreen or chagrin . The Tartars who reside at 
Astracan, with a few of the Armenians of that city, are 
the only people in the Russian empire acquainted with 
the art of making shagreen. Those who follow this oc- 
cupation not only gain considerable profit by the sale of 
their production to the Tartars of Cuban, Astracan, and 
Casan, who ornament with it their Turkey leather boots, 
slippers, and other articles made of leather; but they de- 
rive considerable advantage from the great sale of horses’ 
hides, which have undergone no other process than that 
of being scraped clean, and of which several thousands 
are annually exported, at the rate of from seventy-five to 
* See M. B' Valentini Museum Museorum oder Vollflandige Schaufyuhne alter 
mattriallkn und specereyen, p. 439, 
