Page:Notes upon Russia (volume 2, 1851).djvu/49
support from the yearly revenues supplied from Biela, dared not go thither, for the prince of Muscovy had deprived them of the lordship of the principality, and usurped the title to himself.
Rsova of Demetrius is a fortified city, lying twenty-three miles due west of Moscow. This fortress, from which the prince usurps to himself a title, is situated on the river Volga, and commands a very extensive domain. There is also another Rsova, called the deserted, a hundred and forty miles from Moscow, twenty from Velikiluki, and as many from Plescov. Beyond Rsova, some miles to the westward, is a wood called Volkonski, from which four rivers take their rise. In this wood is a marsh, named Fronov, out of which flows a river of no great size, and after a course of about two miles, falls into a lake, named Volgo. From this lake it again emerges, increased by a multitude of streams, and is called Volga from the name of the lake. After passing through many marshes, and receiving into itself many rivers, it empties itself by five-and-twenty, or, as some say, seventy mouths into the Caspian sea (called by the Russians Chvalensko Morie), and not into the ocean, as a certain author has written.'[1]
The Volga is called Esk by the Tartars, and Rha by Ptolemy, and is so near to the Don that it is said they are only seven miles apart from each other. We shall speak in the proper place of the cities and towns by which it passes. In the same wood, about ten miles from the marsh of Fronov, is the village of Dnyepersko, near which rises the Borysthenes, called by the natives the Dneiper, but which we here call Borysthenes. Not far from that place is the monastery of the Holy Trinity, where rises another river smaller than the former, called Niepretz, a name given to it by way of a diminutive. Both these rivers, however, meet between the source of the Borysthenes and the marsh of Fronov, and
- ↑ Miechov, Tractatus de duabus Sarmatiis.