Dealings with Byzantium via the Black Sea went better for them. As regards raiding, although they suffered repeated heavy defeats from the better organized Byzantine forces, they also had the occasional profitable success, as noted above. The Primary Chronicle records, meanwhile, repeated and detailed treaties for trading, which must have carried on continually, except, perhaps, when a new Prince of Kiev decided he had to make a demonstration of his power and warlike skills. Trade with Byzantium must have profited both sides, for the Byzantines could ‘sell on’ to the Muslim world. It was profitable to the Rus as well, for their trade goods largely came free, extracted by force and extortion from the Slavic peoples in the basins of the Don and Dnieper. And furs were not the only, or perhaps even the most valuable, commodity first extorted and then traded.