Page:Notes upon Russia (volume 2, 1851).djvu/62

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NOTES UPON RUSSIA.

Jaroslav is a fortified city on the bank of the Volga, twelve miles from Rostov, on the direct road from Moscow. The country is tolerably fertile, especially in the parts near the Volga. Like Rostov, it belonged to the second sons of the princes, but was forcibly taken by the same monarch; and although there still remain dukes of the province called knesi, yet the prince usurps the title to himself, the country being granted to the knesi as to subjects. The country is held by three knesi, however, descended from the second-born princes, whom the Russians call Jaroslavski. The first is Vasiley, who conducted me to and fro from my dwelling to the prince. The second is Simeon Federovitz, named Kurbski, from Kurba, his inheritance. He is an old man, and very reduced in body, from the remarkable abstinence and severity of life which he has adopted since the time that old age began to come upon him. For many years he has abstained from eating meat. He only eats fish on Sunday, Tuesday, and Saturday; but on Monday, Wednesday, and Friday, at fast time, he abstains from these. The grand-duke used sometimes to send him with an army through Permia into Jugaria to the great emperor, to subdue distant nations; and he has accomplished a great part of the journey on foot on account of the quantity of snow; and when the snow was melted, after crossing the mountain of Petchora, performed the remainder in boats. The last is Ivan, surnamed Possetzen, who, in the name of his prince, went as ambassador to the Emperor Charles in Spain, and returned with us. He was so poor, that (as we know for a certainty) he borrowed clothes and a kolpack (which is a head-dress) of somebody else to travel in. He must have been greatly mistaken, therefore, who wrote to the effect, that this man could in any necessity send thirty thousand horse soldiers to his prince out of his own territory or inheritance.[1]

  1. ↑ In the Russian chronicles, where allusion is made to this prince, he appears to have been described under the name of Ivan Ivanovich,
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