Their galleys, never less than 80 feet in length, sometimes measured 110 by 70 in width, and in the fifteenth century were forty-five in number, with a total of 11,000 seamen. At the same time they also possessed 3,000 other vessels of from ten to one hundred tons, with 17,000 men, and 300 big ships with 8,000 men. In all, therefore, 3,345 vessels, with 36,000 seamen,[359] a strength that seems positively incredible, when we remember that the 'Serenissima' Republic of Venice was a city built on the sandbanks of the lagoons; that the entire management of its policy and trade was in the hands of men born within the narrow bounds of those lagoons. Accordingly we may imagine how great was the united strength of all the maritime republics, and how signal the courage of the Florentines in competing with them so obstinately for the Levantine trade. Before launching a single galley, the Florentines had already established many houses and banks in every place, and contrived to introduce their merchandise in all the principal Eastern ports. We not only find them doing a vast business at Tana with great energy and enterprise, but also pushing on thence to far remoter regions. Pegolotti minutely describes the route followed by them, their manner of travelling, and the time employed in it. They journeyed, he tells us, through Astracan (Gittarchan), to Saracanco (Sarai) on the Volga, thence by Organci in Zagataio,[360] not far from the Caspian Sea, and crossing Asia by many places of which the names cannot be identified with any known at this day, they penetrated as far as Gambaluc, or Gamulecco, the chief city of China, that is to say, the city of Pekin. They employed eight or ten months to go from Tana to Pekin. Thus a period of almost two years was required for the journey there and back and time of sojourn, and when we also calculate the voyage from Porto Pisano or Leghorn to Tana and back, it is plain that a Florentine bound for Pekin could rarely count on returning home within three years.[361]