I 
400 VOYAGE DOWN THE DON, 
* 
chap, deserts bearing the name of Steppes. The 
xiv. ° 
^ v ; very earliest adventurers trom the civilized 
parts of Europe to these remote and barbarous 
regions, found the country exactly as it now 
appears. A faithful description of its features 
occurs in the narrative of TV. de Rubruquis, who 
was employed as a missionary about the middle 
of the thirteenth century'. “ We journeyed,’’ 
says he, “ towards the East, with no other 
objects in view than earth and sky, and occa- 
sionally the sea upon our right (which is called 
the Sea of Tanais), and moreover the sepulchres 
of the Comani ; these seemed about two leagues 
distant, constructed according to the mode of 
burial which characterized their ancestors.” 
What the land of the Comani was, is clearly 
ascertained by the Voyage of the Ambassador 
from Pope Innocent the Fourth to Tahtary, in the 
year 1240 , as taken out of the thirty-second 
book of the Speculum Historiale of Vincentius 
Behiacensis s . “We journeyed through the 
(1) “ Ibamus ergo versus orientem, nihil videntcs nisi ecelum et 
terrain, et aliquando mare ad dextram, quod dicitur Mare Tanais, et 
etiam scpulturas Comanorum, qua 1 2 apparebaut nobis a duabus leucis, 
secundum quod solebant parentela; eorum sepeliri simul.” Jlineru- 
nuin iy. de Rubruquis, auno 1253. See Hakluyt, vol. I. p. 80. 
(2) “ Ibamus autcm per terrain Comanorum, qua tota est plana, 
et Gumina quatuor habct magna. Primum appcllatur Neper (Borys- 
Uioncs) ; secundum appellatur l)mi (Taua'is) ; tertium dicitur Volga 
(Kha) ; quartum nomiuatur Jace (Rbymuus).” Ib. p. 47. 
