Too, the town is surrounded by a wall, with two gates, one large, facing the inlet, leading in from Thassa, the other small, leading to the forest behind the town.  The wall is of sharpened logs, and is defended by a  catwalk.

The main business of Kassau is trade, lumber and fishing.  The slender striped parsit fish has vast plankton banks north of the town, and may there, particularly in the spring and the fall, be taken in great numbers.  The smell of the fish-drying sheds of Kassau carries far out to sea. 

The trade is largely in furs from the north, exchanged for weapons, iron bars, salt and luxury goods, such as jewellery and silk, from the south, usually brought to Kassau from Lydius by ten-oared coasting vessel.   Lumber, of course, is a valuable commodity.  It is generally milled and taken northward.

Torvaldsland, though not treeless, is bleak. In it, fine Ka-la-na wood, for example, and supple temwood, cannot grow.  These two woods are prized in the north.  A hall built with Ka-la-na wood, for example, is thought a great luxury.  Such halls, incidentally, are often adorned with rich carvings.  The men of Torvaldsland are skilled with their hands.

Trade to the south, of course is largely in furs acquired from Torvaldsland, and in barrels of smoked, dried parsit fish.  From the south, of course, the people of Kassau obtain the goods they trade northward to Torvaldsland and , too, of course, civilised goods for themselves.

The population of Kassau I did not think to be more than eleven hundred persons.  There are villages about, however, which use Kassau as their market and meeting place.  If we count these perhaps we might think of greater Kassau as having a population in the neighbourhood of some twenty-three hundred persons.

The most important thing about Kassau, however, was that it was the seat of the High Initiate of the north. It was, accordingly, the spiritual centre of a district extending for hundreds of pasangs around.  The nearest High Initiate to Kassau was hundreds of pasangs south in  Lydius.