and fairness, nothing comparable to ours. There are many towns and
villages also, but built out of order and with no handsomeness;
their streets and ways are not paved with stone as ours are; the
walls of their houses are of wood; the roofs, for the most part, are
covered with shingle boards. There is hard by the city a very fair
castle, strong, and furnished with artillery, whereunto the city is
joined directly towards the north with a brick wall; the walls also
of the castle are built with brick, and are in breadth or thickness
eighteen feet. This castle hath on the one side a dry ditch, and on
the other side the river Volga, whereby it is made almost
impregnable. The same Volga, trending towards the east, doth admit
into it the company of the River Occa.

In the castle aforesaid there are in number nine churches or
chapels, not altogether unhandsome, which are used and kept by
certain religious men, over whom there is, after a sort, a patriarch
or governor, and with him other reverend fathers, all which for the
greater part dwell within the castle. As for the king's court and
palace, it is not of the neatest, only in form it is four-square and
of low building, much surpassed and excelled by the beauty and
elegancy of the houses of the kings of England. The windows are
very narrowly built, and some of them by glass, some other by
lattices admit the light; and whereas the palaces of our princes are
decked and adorned with hangings of cloth of gold, there is none
such there; they build and join to all their walls benches, and that
not only in the court of the emperor, but in all private men's
houses.

Now after that they had remained about twelve days in the city,
there was then a messenger sent unto them to bring them to the