In 1330, Peter, bishop of Senascopoli (sic) or Savastopoli, addressed a letter to the Archbishop of Canterbury and the bishops of England, collectively, in which he complains of the oppression practised on Christians in the East, who were carried off into slavery; an infamous traffic he was unable to suppress because the local authorities, who belonged to the schismatic Greek religion, were inimical to him. He entreats the bishops of England to present the bearer of the letter, one Joachim of Cremona, to the warriors of England, who fight for God and aspire to power! That letter is preserved in the public library at Ratisbon, and can scarcely be supposed to have reached its destination at any time. Being in Mingrelia, Schiltberger was in a Christian country temptingly situated on the borders of the Black Sea. It is most likely that he received sufficient encouragement from the people to induce him to attempt to regain his liberty, and, at a favourable moment, he and four of his Christian comrades made their escape and succeeded in reaching the coast at Poti,[7] where they had hoped to find some friendly vessel that would receive them. Failing in this, they rode along the shore to the hills in Lazistan, and one evening, after dark, had the good fortune to communicate, by means of signal fires, with a European ship off the land. Our traveller and his companions were obliged to prove their identity by repeating the Pater Noster, Ave Maria, and Credo, before the boat’s crew could be prevailed upon to take them off to the ship; and after a tedious voyage of many weeks, during which the vessel was chased by pirates and detained by contrary gales, and the crew had suffered from want of provisions, Constantinople was reached. There the runaways were kindly received and cared for by the emperor (John VIII. Palæologos), who placed them in charge of the patriarch, in whose house they lived. Schiltberger is full of admiration for the great palaces, the church of St. Sophia, and the magnificent walls of the imperial city; but not being free to move about as he pleased, during his long stay in it, the account of Constantinople and of its marvels is exceedingly meagre, when compared with the descriptions left by other visitors. Indeed, what little Schiltberger was able to do in the way of sight-seeing was effected surreptitiously, with the connivance of the patriarch’s servants, whom he accompanied on their errands as opportunities offered. At the expiration of three months, our author and his comrades were sent to Kilia at the estuary of the Danube. Hence Johann Schiltberger easily found his way to his native country, where he arrived some time in the year 1427, offering thanks to Almighty God for his escape “from the Infidel people and their wicked religion”, and for having preserved him from “the risk of perdition of body and soul”.