The Zamoskvoretski quarter, south of the river, was in mediæval times little better than a swamp and long uninhabited. The Mongols settled there later, and Tartar names indicate some streets, as Balchoog, "quagmire," and Bolotnaia, "swamps;" as late as the reign of the Great Catherine, the Island where is now the Babygorodskaia (little town) was open waste land, and there the rebel impostor Pugatchev, brought to Moscow in an iron cage, was beheaded in 1773. A raised road Krimski-val, above the fen-land leads from the Donskoi Monastyr to the Krimski Most, the tubular bridge over the river near the Ostogenka. It obtained its name from the fact that the Krim Tartars in their attacks on Moscow always crossed the river at that point, and it is still better known as Krimski Brode or "ford." NOVO DEVICHI CONVENT West of the Krimski Most, where the river makes a wide sweep and on three side bounds a large tract of low lying land, is the Maidens' Field, which tradition asserts is the locality of the market at which the Tartars in old times purchased Muscovite girls for the Mohammedan harems in Constantinople and Ispahan. Historians contend that the name is derived from the convent established there since 1525. There is no doubt that this was established in the early years of the sixteenth century to commemorate the recapture of Smolensk by Vasili III. It is also indisputable that there were already convents existing within Moscow and that _Novo Devichi Monastyr_ means simply _New Monastery for Women_. Helen, "the maid," was the first abbess of this, and may have given it the name, but it was customary in Moscow, before and since, to name the convents after the dedication, as Conception, Nativity, Passion, etc., so some earlier use of the popular appellation "Maidens' Field" is more probable.