Laskaris Kananos’s Greek description of a journey around the Baltic was first published in 1881. Nicolaus Busch argued that the journey was probably made in 1438 and that Kananos might have been connected to the Russian delegation that travelled to the Council of Ferrara. On the basis of neglected literary and archival evidence, this article proposes a later date of around 1468 and suggests that Kananos may not have been a merchant or diplomat as has been supposed but a refugee who was gathering alms to pay ransoms.