Notes upon Russia

The publications of the Hakluyt Society (founded in 1846) made available edited (and sometimes translated) early accounts of exploration. The first series, which ran from 1847 to 1899, consists of 100 books containing published or previously unpublished works by authors from Christopher Columbus to Sir Francis Drake, and covering voyages to the New World, to China and Japan, to Russia and to Africa and India. This volume contains the first part of the account by Sigismund von Herberstein (1486–1566) of his visits to Russia in 1517 and 1526 as Ambassador of the Holy Roman Emperor. He published his Rerum Moscoviticarum Commentarii in Latin in 1549, and it is the earliest detailed Western description of the land and people of Russia. It is preceded in this 1851 translation by a set of letter-poems written to his friends by George Turberville, who visited Russia in 1568.