Page:Notes upon Russia (volume 2, 1851).djvu/39
custodiis). The prince then deposed his mother, and threw her into a monastery, and took possession of the citadel and the principality; and to prevent any subsequent revolt on the part of the people of Rezan, he dispersed a great portion of them through different colonies, so that the strength of the entire principality was loosened and broken. Moreover, in 1521, when the Tartars pitched their camp before Moscow, Ivan escaped from custody in the tumult, and fled into Lithuania, where he still continued in exile [when I was in Russia?].
The town of Tula is nearly forty German miles distant from Rezan, but thirty-six southward from Moscow; it is the last city one comes to before reaching the desert plain. It contains a stone citadel built by Vasiley Ivanovich. A river of the same name flows by it. Another river, called the Uppa, washes the citadel on the east, and joining the river Tula, flows into the Occa, nearly twenty German miles above Worotinski. Not far from its mouth is the fortress of Ovoyov'. The town of Tula, moreover, had its own prince in the time of Vasiley.
The very famous river Don, which divides Europe from Asia,[1] rises nearly eight miles south and a little by east from Tula, — not in the Riphæan [i.e., Ural] mountains, as some have stated, but in the Ivanovosero, that is, the Great Lake of Ivan, which in length and breadth stretches over about 1,500 versts, and takes its rise in a wood which some call Okonitzkilies, others Jepiphanovlies. From this lake, the two great rivers, the Schat and the Don, take their rise. The Schat flows westward, and after receiving the river Uppa, flows in a north-west direction into the Occa. But the Don in its first course flows due east, and runs between the kingdoms of Kazan and Astrachan, six or seven German miles from the Volga; it then takes a southward course, and forms the
- ↑ This notion of Herberstein, that the Don separated Europe from Asia, accounts for his elsewhere describing Moscow as situated in Asia.