The European black death, however, can be traced with accuracy to the Crimean peninsula. Gaffa, a town in Crimea, now known as Theodosia, had been founded and fortified by the Genoese. It, as well as other cities along the Black Sea, was largely populated by Italians. One of these, Gabriel de Mussis, a lawyer in Gaffa, has left a faithful account of his experience and share in the introduction of the plague into Europe. In 1346 in the Orient numberless Tartars and Saracens were attacked with an unknown disease and sudden death. In the city of Tanais, through some excess, a racial struggle ensued between the Tartars and the Italian merchants. The latter eventually escaped and took refuge in Gaffa, which in time was besieged by the Tartars. During the siege, which lasted three years, the Tartar hordes were attacked by the plague, which daily carried off many thousands. The besiegers, despairing of reducing the city by direct attack, attempted to do so in another way. By means of their engines of war they projected the dead bodies into the beleaguered city, which, as a result, soon became infected. The Christian defenders took to their ships, and abandoning Gaffa, sailed westward, touching at Constantinople, Greece, Italy and France. Wherever the infected vessels touched they left the plague. Constantinople thus became infected early in 1347. During the summer Greece, Sardinia, Corsica and parts of the Italian coast developed the disease. In the fall it reached Marseilles. The following year it spread inland into Italy, France, Spain, and even into England. In another year or two it spread over Germany, Russia, and crossed to the Scandinavian peninsula. Within four years it had completed the circuit of Europe, spreading untold death and misery. No greater catastrophe has been recorded in the history of the world. The rapidity with which the disease spread among the fugitives from Gaffa, and in the cities visited by their ships, is despairingly narrated by De Mussis, who, returning in one of the ships to Genoa, says: “After landing we entered our homes. Inasmuch as a grave disease had befallen us, and of the thousands that journeyed with us scarcely ten remained, the relatives, friends and neighbors hastened to greet us. Woe to us who brought with us the darts of death, who scattered the deadly poison through the breath of our words.” According to this writer 40,000 died in Genoa, leaving scarcely a seventh of the original population. Venice was said to have lost 100,000, Naples 60,000, Sienna 70,000, Florence 100,000. All told, Italy lost half of its population. Of the contemporaneous writers none has printed the horrors of the plague more vividly than does Boccaccio in his introduction to the ‘Decameron.’