Beginning with 1224, the fateful year of the Kalka disaster, the whole course of nature seemed changed throughout Russia. There was an unheard-of dry season, and a hazy heat with it; pitchy forests were burning and turf swamps were smoking all over the country; birds had not strength to fly, and fell down inanimate. In the autumn appeared a great comet; after sunset it lighted up the whole heavens, extending like a long, awful lance from the west toward the east. There were tales of floods overwhelming distant places. There were reports also of raging fires. Novgorod burned so that the flames crossed the river; all thought the end of the city was before them. In Vladimir there was a fire such as no man remembered. Besides this, there were earthquakes. In Vladimir, during mass, the holy images in churches began to quiver, the walls of the city were trembling. In Kief the stone church of the Holy Virgin sank at the corners. More than once was the sun darkened. Men who knew the movements of heavenly bodies strove to pacify people by explaining that the moon had gone through the sky, stopped in front of the sun, and thus hid it. But the sun was affected in other ways; once, while rising, it was like a small star, and no one could see where its size had gone; then suddenly it appeared in full greatness; another time it sent immense pillars of light through the skies, which were green, blue and purple. Especially terrible was it in Kief; from these pillars of many-colored light a fiery cloud formed, which the wind carried forward till it brooded above the whole city. People fell on their knees and prayed to the Lord to have mercy; they took farewell of one another, feeling sure that the end of all life was then near them. The fiery cloud dropped, moved aside, and fell into the Dnieper, where it vanished without injury to any man. There was terrible famine in places, above all in Novgorod; there were neither dogs nor cats left for food in the city; men killed their own brothers and ate them; then there was pestilence. In Novgorod there were not graveyards to hold all the corpses, and fences were made around new ones, in which forty-two thousand people were buried. In Smolensk they laid out four new graveyards; in two of these sixteen thousand were buried; in the third seven thousand, and in the fourth nine thousand. Confused and scattered stories of a terrible invasion were spread among people. From the East, from the land of the Bulgars of the Volga, came reports of ill-omen, and then the tale of the “Mongol” became universal. “Oh, that is they!” was heard now in all places. “It is they who gave the Russian princes that awful defeat on the Kalka!” But who these pagans were, no man could indicate. According to report, they came of impure races hidden away in unknown regions. It was said that there was a prophecy of old concerning those people which said: “They will come before time ends, and capture all places.”