510 THE DECLINE AND FALL husbandry ; and the endless exportation of salt fish and caviar is annually renewed by the enormous sturgeons that are caught at the mouth of the Don, or Tanais, in their last station of the rich ntiud and shallow water of the Maeotis.^^ The waters of the Oxus, the Caspian, the Volga, and the Don opened a rare and laborious passage for the gems and spices of India ; and, after three months' march, the caravans of Carizme met the Italian vessels in the harbours of Crimea.^- These various branches of trade were monopolized by the diligence and the power of the Genoese. Their rivals of Venice and Pisa wei'e forcibly expelled ; the natives were awed by the castles and cities, which arose on the foundations of their humble factories ; and their principal establishment of Caffa ^^ was besieged with- out effect by the Tartar powers. Destitute of a navy, the Greeks were oppressed by these haughty merchants, who fed or famished Constantinople, according to their interest. They proceeded to usurp the customs, the fishery, and even the toll, of the Bosphorus ; and, while they derived from these objects a revenue of two hundred thousand pieces of gold, a remnant of thirty thousand was reluctantly allowed to the emperor.^* The colony of Pera or Galata acted, in peace and war, as an independent state ; and, as it will happen in distant settle- ments, the Genoese podesta too often forgot that he was the servant of his own masters. Their waj Tlicsc usurpations were encouraged by the weakness of the perorcanta- elder Androiiicus, and by the civil wars that afflicted his age 1348 ■ * and the minority of his grandson. The talents of Cantacuzene were employed to the ruin, rather than the restoration, of the empire ; and after his domestic victory he was condemned to an ignominious trial, whether the Greeks or the Genoese should reign in Constantinople. The merchants of Pera were offended by his refusal of some contiguous lands, some commanding
- ' Chardin (Voyages en Perse, torn. i. p. 48) was assured at CafFa that these
fishes were sometimes twenty-four or twenty-six feet long, weighed eight or nine hundred pounds, and yielded three or four quintals of caviar. The corn of the Bosphorus had supplied the Athenians in [and long before] the time of Demosthenes. "2 De Guignes, Hist, des Huns, tom. iii. p. 343, 344. Viaggi di Ramusio, torn. i. fol. 400. But this land or water carriage could only be practicable when Tar- tary was united under a wise and powerful monarch. 3 Nic. Gregoras (1. xiii. c. 12) is judicious and well-informed on the trade and colonies of the Black Sea. Chardin describes the pre.sent ruins of Cafifa, where, in forty days, he saw above 400 sail employed in the corn and lish trade (Voyages en Perse, tom. i. p. 46-48).
- ■• See Nic. Gregoras, 1. xvii. c. i.
