arrived in, as I called it, a Christian country; or, at least, in a
country governed by Christians: for though the Muscovites do, in my
opinion, but just deserve the name of Christians (yet such they pretend
to be, and are very devout in their way:) it would certainly occur to
any man who travels the world as I have done, and who had any power of
reflection; I say, it would occur to him, to reflect, what a blessing it
is to be brought into the world where the name of God, and of a
Redeemer, is known, worshipped, and adored—and not where the people,
given up by Heaven to strong delusions, worship the devil, and prostrate
themselves to stocks and stones; worship monsters, elements,
horrible-shaped animals, and statues, or images of monsters. Not a town
or city we passed through but had their pagods, their idols, and their
temples; and ignorant people worshipping even the works of their
own hands!
Now we came where, at least, a face of the Christian worship appeared,
where the knee was bowed to Jesus; and whether ignorantly or not, yet
the Christian religion was owned, and the name of the true God was
called upon and adored; and it made the very recesses of my soul rejoice
to see it. I saluted the brave Scotch merchant I mentioned above, with
my first acknowledgment of this; and, taking him by the hand, I said to
him, “Blessed be God, we are once again come among Christians!” He
smiled, and answered, “Do not rejoice too soon, countryman; these
Muscovites are but an odd sort of Christians; and but for the name of
it, you may see very little of the substance for some months farther of
our journey.”
“Well,” said I, “but still it is better than paganism, and worshipping
of devils.”—“Why, I’ll tell you,” said he; “except the Russian soldiers
in garrisons, and a few of the inhabitants of the cities upon the road,
all the rest of this country, for above a thousand miles farther, is
inhabited by the worst and most ignorant of pagans.” And so indeed
we found it.
We were now launched into the greatest piece of solid earth, if I
understand any thing of the surface of the globe, that is to be found in
any part of the world: we had at least twelve hundred miles to the sea,
eastward; we had at least two thousand to the bottom of the Baltic sea,
westward; and almost three thousand miles, if we left that sea, and went
on west to the British and French channels; we had full five thousand
miles to the Indian or Persian sea, south; and about eight hundred miles
to the Frozen sea, north; nay, if some people may be believed, there
might be no sea north-east till we came round the pole, and consequently
into the north-west, and so had a continent of land into America, no
mortal knows where; though I could give some reasons why I believe that
to be a mistake too.
As we entered into the Muscovite dominions, a good while before we came
to any considerable town, we had nothing to observe there but this:
first, that all the rivers run to the east. As I understood by the
charts which some of our caravans had with them, it was plain that all
those rivers ran into the great river Yamour, or Gammour. This river, by
the natural course of it, must run into the east sea, or Chinese ocean.
The story they tell us, that the mouth of this river is choked up with
bulrushes of a monstrous growth, viz. three feet about, and twenty or
thirty feet high, I must be allowed to say I believe nothing of; but as
its navigation is of no use, because there is no trade that way, the
Tartars, to whom alone it belongs, dealing in nothing but cattle; so
nobody that ever I heard or, has been curious enough either to go down
to the mouth of it in boats, or to come up from the mouth of it in
ships; but this is certain, that this river running due east, in the
latitude of sixty degrees, carries a vast concourse of rivers along with
it, and finds an ocean to empty itself in that latitude; so we are sure
of sea there.
Some leagues to the north of this river there are several considerable
rivers, whose streams run as due north as the Yamour runs east; and
these are all found to join their waters with the great river Tartarus,
named so from the northernmost nations of the Mogul Tartars, who, the
Chinese say, were the first Tartars in the world; and who, as our
geographers allege, are the Gog and Magog mentioned in sacred story.
These rivers running all northward, as well as all the other rivers I am
yet to speak of, made it evident that the northern ocean bounds the land
also on that side; so that it does not seem rational in the least to
think that the land can extend itself to join with America on that side,
or that there is not a communication between the northern and the
eastern ocean; but of this I shall say no more; it was my observation at
that time, and therefore I take notice of it in this place. We now
advanced from the river Arguna by easy and moderate journies, and were
very visibly obliged to the care the czar of Muscovy has taken to have
cities and towns built in as many places as are possible to place them,
where his soldiers keep garrison, something, like the stationary
soldiers placed by the Romans in the remotest countries of their empire,
some of which I had read were particularly placed in Britain for the
security of commerce, and for the lodging of travellers; and thus it was
here; though wherever we came at these towns and stations the garrisons
and governor were Russians and professed mere pagans, sacrificing to
idols, and worshipping the sun, moon, and stars, or all the host of
heaven; and not only so, but were, of all the heathens and pagans that
ever I met with, the most barbarous, except only that they did not eat
man’s flesh, as our savages of America did.
Some instances of this we met with in the country between Arguna, where
we enter the Muscovite dominions, and a city of Tartars and Russians
together, called Nertzinskay; in which space is a continued desert or
forest, which cost us twenty days to travel over it. In a village near
the last of those places, I had the curiosity to go and see their way of
living; which is most brutish and unsufferable: they had, I suppose, a
great sacrifice that day; for there stood out upon an old stump of a
tree, an idol made of wood, frightful as the devil; at least as any
thing we can think of to represent the devil that can be made. It had a
head certainly not so much as resembling any creature that the world
ever saw; ears as big as goats’ horns, and as high; eyes as big as a
crown-piece; and a nose like a crooked ram’s horn, and a mouth extended
four-cornered, like that of a lion, with horrible teeth, hooked like a
parrot’s under bill. It was dressed up in the filthiest manner that you
can suppose; its upper garment was of sheep-skins, with the wool
outward; a great Tartar bonnet on the head, with two horns growing
through it: it was about eight feet high, yet had no feet or legs, or
any other proportion of parts.
This scarecrow was set up at the outside of the village; and when I came
near to it, there were sixteen or seventeen creatures, whether men or
women I could not tell, for they make no distinction by their habits,
either of body or head; these lay all flat on the ground, round this
formidable block of shapeless wood. I saw no motion among them any more
than if they had been logs of wood, like their idol; at first I really
thought they had been so; but when I came a little nearer, they started
up upon their feet, and raised a howling cry, as if it had been so many
deep-mouthed hounds, and walked away as if they were displeased at our
disturbing them. A little way off from this monster, and at the door of
a tent or hut, made all of sheep-skins and cow-skins, dried, stood three
butchers: I thought they were such; for when I came nearer to them, I
found they had long knives in their hands, and in the middle of the tent
appeared three sheep killed, and one young bullock, or steer. These, it
seems, were sacrifices to that senseless log of an idol; and these three
men priests belonging to it; and the seventeen prostrated wretches were
the people who brought the offering, and were making their prayers to
that stock.
I confess I was more moved at their stupidity, and this brutish worship
of a hobgoblin, than ever I was at any thing in my life: to see God’s
most glorious and best creature, to whom he had granted so many
advantages, even by creation, above the rest of the works of his hands,
vested with a reasonable soul, and that soul adorned with faculties and
capacities adapted both to honour his Maker and be honoured by him; I
say, to see it sunk and degenerated to a degree so more than stupid, as
to prostrate itself to a frightful nothing, a mere imaginary object
dressed up by themselves, and made terrible to themselves by their own
contrivance, adorned only with clouts and rags; and that this should be
the effect of mere ignorance, wrought up into hellish devotion by the
devil himself; who, envying his Maker the homage and adoration of his
creatures, had deluded them into such gross, surfeiting, sordid, and
brutish things, as one would think should shock nature itself.
But what signified all the astonishment and reflection of thoughts? Thus
it was, and I saw it before my eyes; and there was no room to wonder at
it, or think it impossible. All my admiration turned to rage; and I rode
up to the image or monster, call it what you will, and with my sword cut
the bonnet that was on its head in two in the middle, so that it hung
down by one of the horns; and one of our men that was with me, took hold
of the sheep skin that covered it, and pulled at it, when, behold, a
most hideous outcry and howling ran through the village, and two or
three hundred people came about my ears, so that I was glad to scour for
it; for we saw some had bows and arrows; but I resolved from that moment
to visit them again.
Our caravan rested three nights at the town, which was about four miles
off, in order to provide some horses, which they wanted, several of the
horses having been lamed and jaded with the badness of the way, and our
long march over the last desert; so we had some leisure here to put my
design in execution. I communicated my project to the Scots merchant, of
Moscow, of whose courage I had had a sufficient testimony, as above. I
told him what I had seen, and with what indignation I had since thought
that human nature could be so degenerate. I told him, I was resolved,
if I could get but four or five men well armed to go with me, to go and
destroy that vile, abominable idol; to let them see, that it had no
power to help itself, and consequently could not be an object of
worship, or to be prayed to, much less help them that offered
sacrifices to it.
He laughed at me: said he, “Your zeal may be good; but what do you
propose to yourself by it?”—“Propose!” said I: “to vindicate the
honour of God, which is insulted by this devil-worship.”—“But how will
it vindicate the honour of God,” said he, “while the people will not be
able to know what you mean by it, unless you could speak to them too,
and tell them so? and then they will fight you too, I will assure you,
for they are desperate fellows, and that especially in defence of their
idolatry.”—“Can we not,” said I, “do it in the night, and then leave
them the reasons in writing, in their own language?”—“Writing!” said
he; “why, there is not in five nations of them one man that knows any
thing of a letter, or how to read a word in any language, or in their
own.”—“Wretched ignorance!” said I to him: “however, I have a great
mind to do it; perhaps nature may draw inferences from it to them, to
let them see how brutish they are to worship such horrid things.”—“Look
you, Sir,” said he; “if your zeal prompts you to it so warmly, you must
do it; but in the next place, I would have you consider these wild
nations of people are subjected by force to the czar of Muscovy’s
dominion; and if you do this, it is ten to one but they will come by
thousands to the governor of Nertzinskay, and complain, and demand
satisfaction; and if he cannot give them satisfaction, it is ten to one
but they revolt; and it will occasion a new war with all the Tartars in
the country.”
This, I confess, put new thoughts into my head for a while; but I harped
upon the same string still; and all that day I was uneasy to put my
project in execution. Towards the evening the Scots merchant met me by
accident in our walk about the town, and desired to speak with me: “I
believe,” said he, “I have put you off your good design; I have been a
little concerned about it since; for I abhor the idol and idolatry as
much as you can do.”—“Truly,” said I, “you have put it off a little, as
to the execution of it, but you have not put it all out of my thoughts;
and, I believe, I shall do it still before I quit this place, though I
were to be delivered up to them for satisfaction.”—“No, no,” said he,
“God forbid they should deliver you up to such a crew of monsters! they
shall not do that neither; that would be murdering you indeed.”—“Why,”
said I, “how would they use me?”—“Use you!” said he: “I’ll tell you how
they served a poor Russian, who affronted them in their worship just as
you did, and whom they took prisoner, after they had lamed him with an
arrow, that he could not run away: they took him and stripped him stark
naked, and set him upon the top of the idol monster, and stood all round
him, and shot as many arrows into him as would stick over his whole
body; and then they burnt him, and all the arrows sticking in him, as a
sacrifice to the idol.”—“And was this the same idol:” said I.—“Yes,”
said he, “the very same.”—“Well,” said I, “I will tell you a story.” So
I related the story of our men at Madagascar, and how they burnt and
sacked the village there, and killed man, woman, and child, for their
murdering one of our men, just as it is related before; and when I had
done, I added, that I thought we ought to do so to this village.
He listened very attentively to the story; but when I talked of doing so
to that village, said he, “You mistake very much; it was not this
village, it was almost a hundred miles from this place; but it was the
same idol, for they carry him about in procession all over the
country.”—“Well,” said I, “then that idol ought to be punished for it;
and it shall,” said I, “if I live this night out.”
In a word, finding me resolute, he liked the design, and told me, I
should not go alone, but he would go with me; but he would go first,
and bring a stout fellow, one of his countrymen, to go also with us;
“and one,” said he, “as famous for his zeal as you can desire any one to
be against such devilish things as these.” In a word, he brought me his
comrade a Scotsman, whom he called Captain Richardson; and I gave him a
full account of what I had seen, and also what I intended; and he told
me readily, he would go with me, if it cost him his life. So we agreed
to go, only we three. I had, indeed, proposed it to my partner, but he
declined it. He said, he was ready to assist me to the utmost, and upon
all occasions, for my defence; but that this was an adventure quite out
of his way: so, I say, we resolved upon our work, only we three, and my
man-servant, and to put it in execution that night about midnight, with
all the secresy imaginable.
However, upon second thoughts, we were willing to delay it till the next
night, because the caravan being to set forward in the morning, we
supposed the governor could not pretend to give them any satisfaction
upon us when we were out of his power. The Scots merchant, as steady in
his resolution to enterprise it as bold in executing, brought me a
Tartar’s robe or gown of sheep-skins, and a bonnet, with a bow and
arrows, and had provided the same for himself and his countryman, that
the people, if they saw us, should not be able to determine who we were.
All the first night we spent in mixing up some combustible matter with
aqua-vitæ, gunpowder, and such other materials as we could get; and,
having a good quantity of tar in a little pot, about an hour after night
we set out upon our expedition.To makee te great wonder look
We came to the place about eleven o’clock at night, and found that the
people had not the least jealousy of danger attending their idol. The
night was cloudy; yet the moon gave us light enough to see that the idol
stood just in the same posture and place that it did before. The people
seemed to be all at their rest; only, that in the great hut, or tent as
we called it, where we saw the three priests, whom we mistook for
butchers, we saw a light, and going up close to the door, we heard
people talking, as if there were five or six of them; we concluded,
therefore, that if we set wildfire to the idol, these men would come out
immediately, and run up to the place to rescue it from the destruction
that we intended for it; and what to do with them we knew not. Once we
thought of carrying it away, and setting fire to it at a distance, but
when we came to handle it we found it too bulky for our carriage; so we
were at a loss again. The second Scotsman was for setting fire to the
tent or hut, and knocking the creatures that were there on the head,
when they came out; but I could not join with that; I was against
killing them, if it was possible to be avoided. “Well then,” said the
Scots merchant, “I will tell you what we will do; we will try to make
them prisoners, tie their hands, and make them stand and see their idol
destroyed.”
As it happened, we had twine or packthread enough about us, which we
used to tie our fire-works together with; so we resolved to attack these
people first, and with as little noise as we could. The first thing we
did, we knocked at the door, when one of the priests coming to it, we
immediately seized upon him, stopped his mouth, and tied his hands
behind him, and led him to the idol, where we gagged him that he might
not make a noise, tied his feet also together, and left him on
the ground.
Two of us then waited at the door, expecting that another would come out
to see what the matter was; but we waited so long till the third man
came back to us; and then nobody coming out, we knocked again gently,
and immediately out came two more, and we served them just in the same
manner, but were obliged to go all with them, and lay them down by the
idol some distance from one another; when going back we found two more
were come out to the door, and a third stood behind them within the
door. We seized the two, and immediately tied them, when the third
stepping back, and crying out, my Scots merchant went in after him, and
taking out a composition we had made, that would only smoke and stink,
he set fire to it, and threw it in among them: by that time the other
Scotsman and my man taking charge of the two men already bound, and tied
together also by the arm, led them away to the idol, and left them
there, to see if their idol would relieve them, making haste back to us.
When the furze we had thrown in had filled the hut with so much smoke
that they were almost suffocated, we then threw in a small leather bag
of another kind, which flamed like a candle, and following it in, we
found there were but four people left, who, it seems, were two men and
two women, and, as we supposed, had been about some of their diabolic
sacrifices. They appeared, in short, frighted to death, at least so as
to sit trembling and stupid, and not able to speak neither, for
the smoke.
In a word, we took them, bound them as we had the other, and all without
any noise, I should have said, we brought them out of the house, or hut,
first; for, indeed, we were not able to bear the smoke any; more than
they were. When we had done this, we carried them all together to the
idol: when we came there we fell to work with him; and first we daubed
him all over, and his robes also, with tar, and such other stuff as we
had, which was tallow mixed with brimstone; then we stopped his eyes,
and ears, and, mouth full of gunpowder; then we wrapped up a great piece
of wildfire in his bonnet; and then sticking all the combustibles we had
brought with us upon him, we looked about to see if we could find any
thing else to help to burn him; when my Scotsman remembered that by the
tent, or hut, where the men were, there lay a heap of dry forage,
whether straw or rushes I do not remember: away he and the other
Scotsman ran, and fetched their arms full of that. When we had done
this, we took all our prisoners, and brought them, having untied their
feet and ungagged their mouths, and made them stand up, and set them
all before their monstrous idol, and then set fire to the whole.
We stayed by it a quarter of an hour, or thereabouts, til the powder in
the eyes, and mouth, and ears of the idol blew up, and, as we could
perceive, had split and deformed the shape of it; and, in a word, till
we saw it burnt into a mere block or log of wood; and then igniting the
dry forage to it, we found it would be soon quite consumed; so we began
to think of going away; but the Scotsman said, “No, we must not go, for
these poor deluded wretches will all throw themselves into the fire, and
burn themselves with the idol.” So we resolved to stay till the forage
was burnt down too, and then we came away and left them.
In the morning we appeared among our fellow-travellers, exceeding busy
in getting ready for our journey; nor could any man suggest that we had
been any where but in our beds, as travellers might be supposed to be,
to fit themselves for the fatigues of that day’s journey.
But it did not end so; for the next day came a great multitude of the
country people, not only of this village, but of a hundred more, for
aught I know, to the town-gates; and in a most outrageous manner
demanded satisfaction of the Russian governor, for the insulting their
priests, and burning their great Cham-Chi-Thaungu; such a hard name they
gave the monstrous creature they worshipped. The people of Nertzinskay
were at first in a great consternation; for they said the Tartars were
no less than thirty thousand, and that in a few days more they would be
one hundred thousand stronger.
The Russian governor sent out messengers to appease them, and gave them
all the good words imaginable. He assured them he knew nothing of it,
and that there had not a soul of his garrison been abroad; that it could
not be from any body there; and if they would let him know who it was,
he should be exemplarily punished. They returned haughtily, That all the
country reverenced the great Cham-Chi-Thaungu, who dwelt in the son,
and no mortal would have dared to offer violence to his image, but some
Christian miscreant; so they called them, it seems; and they therefore
denounced war against him, and all the Russians, who, they said, were
miscreants and Christians.
The governor, still patient, and unwilling to make a breach, or to have
any cause of war alleged to be given by him, the czar having straitly
charged him to treat the conquered country with gentleness and civility,
gave them still all the good words he could; at last he told them, there
was a caravan gone towards Russia that morning, and perhaps it was some
of them who had done them this injury; and that, if they would be
satisfied with that, he would send after them, to inquire into it. This
seemed to appease them a little; and accordingly the governor sent after
us, and gave us a particular account how the thing was, intimating
withal, that if any in our caravan had done it, they should make their
escape; but that whether they had done it or no, we should make all the
haste forward that was possible; and that in the meantime he would keep
them in play as long as he could.