From Europe to Constantinople there were several main routes. Two tourists took the trade route from Danzig through Lemberg to Kamenetz, the frontier town of Poland, then down the river Pruth to Reni, a centre of the caviare trade, and so down the Danube to its mouth and by sea to Constantinople, which last part coincided with the route of the Russian pilgrims who sailed down the Dnieper or the Don and coasted along the Black Sea shore. A weird crew on a weird journey, in boats which, big or little, were used to being mounted on wheels, through country where nothing living was to be seen but wild beasts and nothing to mark distances save the mouths of tributary streams. Then there was Busbecq's way, who used the Danube, but not to the mouth; leaving it soon after Belgrade had been passed and travelling by the great road through Sofia and Adrianople along which the Grand Signor marched to bring war and Christian ambassadors came to buy peace. From this road, going westward, diverged the roads to Spalato and to Ragusa, the two most direct ways to Venice. Yet but few tourists travelled by these two roads. It was not that they were little used. Besides the ambassadors to Constantinople from Ragusa itself, which meant at least two journeys each year on account of the tribute, Della Valle speaks of the ordinary post taking that direction and the Venetian representative at Constantinople keeping forty Schiavonians for post work, who travelled on foot. The mountain passes were terrible, and the danger from wolves and dogs in Servia considerable; also from robbers. At certain points on Mount Rhodope, for instance, men were stationed to beat drums when the road was supposed to be clear of them, and a feature of the district was the "Palangha," a roughly fortified enclosure large enough for sixty or seventy Turks to live within and to serve as a temporary shelter to those who lived roundabout; for the robber bands sometimes numbered three hundred. Except at the regular stopping places few people were seen, for the Christians established their villages off the main road for fear of the Turks, who were so far uncertain of their control over them as to use continual severities. A French ambassador, whose guide led him astray near one of these villages, saw all the inhabitants making off to the mountains, mistaking him for a Turkish official. And their houses he says were no better than "gabions couverts." But with these, as with all people who live under a despotism, especially a foreign military one, their chief protection consisted in appearing more miserable than they were; there was no part of Europe where food was better or cheaper; neither did the people treat strangers with the ferocity produced by extreme wretchedness, and at Sofia, in fact, Blount found the opposite extreme—"nor hath it yet lost the old Grecian civility, for of all the cities I ever passed, either in Christendom or without, I never saw anywhere where a stranger