where they met with Crown Prince Paul, who confirmed the promises made by von Trappe. The special privileges included guarantees of religious freedom, exemption from military service, 70 ha (175 acres) of free land for each family, exemption from swearing oaths in legal proceedings, ability to establish their own schools and teach in their own language, the right to restrict the establishment of taverns and the ability to make their own beverages. These rights and privileges were beyond those enjoyed by common Russian peasants. There were restrictions that applied to all colonists, such as a restrictions against proselytizing among Russian Orthodox Church members and revocation of privileges for anyone leaving or marrying outside of the colony. Land could be inherited, so long as it remained part of the settlement. A farm could not be subdivided among heirs in order to keep the intact and not degrade the model farming practices that were the intention of the government. Upon their return, Höppner and Bartsch found that four families had already departed for Riga and hundreds more were eager to immigrate. The West Prussian authorities, though restricting the expansion of Mennonite settlements locally, did not want the wealth of the Mennonites to leave the country. Only the poorest families were granted passports. Settlement Mennonite settlers, 228 families in all, set out for Russia in the winter of 1787, arriving in Dubrovna (today in Belarus) in fall of 1788, where they over-wintered. Early in 1789 they traveled down the Dnieper River to the settlement site, on the banks of the Dnieper, near present-day Kherson. Their original destination was now a battlefield because of renewed Russo-Turkish hostilities, necessitating an alternate location. They received land at a new site on Khortytsia, a small tributary of the Dnieper, near Alexandrovsk (present-day Zaporizhzhia). The pioneering years were extremely difficult. The more prosperous Mennonites brought their possessions by wagon, while the others sent them by barge. When the barges arrived they found that the containers had been ransacked and valuables removed or ruined by rain. Similarly, building material sent down-river was stolen before it arrived. Many of the settlers were city laborers and tradesmen with no knowledge of farming, and the farmers among them found the dry steppes unsuitable to their former farming methods. Internal friction among the settlers, rooted in a long-standing division separating Frisian and Flemish branches of the church who lived in different ways, was