The products of the more distant East reached Italy in Genoese and Venetian ships, through Armenian merchants at Trebizond, and through Arabs by way of Alexandria and Damascus. Those of the north, so necessary for a seafaring people, were brought from the mouth of the Don, the merchandise being floated down that great river in boats from the interior. The Mongols were the masters of all the region thereabouts; but the insinuating Italians, aware of the interest of this branch of commerce, played upon their barbarous pride with so much dexterity that they succeeded in making treaties with them by which they were allowed to occupy certain trading posts where the goods ordered might accumulate and their own wares be exchanged for the productions of Russia, Tartary, and Persia. The wily Genoese had bought from a Tartar prince, at the beginning of the fourteenth century, a small piece of land on the south-eastern shore of the Crimea on which to build a factory. Only a few rude cabins were raised at first, for stores and the dwellings of their agents; but the traffic soon brought together a large population, sumptuous palaces were erected, a strong and lofty wall was built around, and Kaffa[32] became one of the most opulent colonies of the republic, with a population at one time of 80,000. The rival Venetians had _their_ great deposit at the city of Azov, on the banks of the Don, twenty miles from its mouth. They were not the proprietors, and, although they received numerous favors from the Tartar governor, they were obliged to share them with the Genoese, Florentines, and others, who also did a flourishing business. The amount of goods collected there was so immense and the value so considerable, that when, as sometimes happened, a destructive fire broke out or the place was plundered, the loss was felt as a shock to commerce throughout the whole of Europe.