caravan, there was nobody knew any thing of the matter; and, as for us
that were guilty, we were the least of all suspected; none so much as
asked us the question; however, the captain of the caravan, for the
time, took the hint that the governor gave us, and we marched or
travelled two days and two nights without any considerable stop, and
then we lay at a village called Plothus; nor did we make any long stop
here, but hastened on towards Jarawena, another of the czar of Muscovy’s
colonies, and where we expected we should be safe; but it is to be
observed, that here we began, for two or three days march, to enter upon
a vast nameless desert, of which I shall say more in its place; and
which if we had now been upon it, it is more than probable we had been
all destroyed. It was the second day’s march from Plothus that by the
clouds of dust behind us at a great distance, some of our people began
to be sensible we were pursued; we had entered the desert, and had
passed by a great lake, called Schanks Osier, when we perceived a very
great body of horse appear on the other side of the lake to the north,
we travelling west. We observed they went away west, as we did; but had
supposed we should have taken that side of the lake, whereas we very
happily took the south side: and in two days more we saw them not, for
they, believing we were still before them, pushed on, till they came to
the river Udda: this is a very great river when it passes farther north,
but when we came to it, we found it narrow and fordable.
The third day they either found their mistake, or had intelligence of
us, and came pouring in upon us towards the dusk of the evening. We had,
to our great satisfaction, just pitched upon a place for our camp, which
was very convenient for the night; for as we were upon a desert, though
but at the beginning of it, that was above five hundred miles over, we
had no towns to lodge at, and, indeed, expected none but the city of
Jarawena, which we had yet two days march to; the desert, however, had
some few woods in it on this side, and little river, which ran all into
the great river Udda. It was in a narrow strait, between two small but
very thick woods, that we pitched our little camp for that night,
expecting to be attacked in the night.
Nobody knew but ourselves what we were pursued for; but as it was usual
for the Mogul Tartars to go about in troops in that desert, so the
caravans always fortify themselves every night against them, as against
armies of robbers; and it was therefore no new thing to be pursued.
But we had this night, of all the nights of our travels, a most
advantageous camp; for we lay between two woods, with a little rivulet
running just before our front; so that we could not be surrounded or
attacked any way, but in our front or rear: we took care also to make
our front as strong as we could, by placing our packs, with our camels
and horses, all in a line on the side of the river, and we felled some
trees in our rear.
In this posture we encamped for the night; but the enemy was upon us
before we had finished our situation: they did not come on us like
thieves, as we expected, but sent three messengers to us, to demand the
men to be delivered to them, that had abused their priests, and burnt
their god Cham-Chi-Thaungu, that they might burn them with fire; and,
upon this, they said, they would go away, and do us no farther harm,
otherwise they would burn us all with fire. Our men looked very blank at
this message, and began to stare at one another, to see who looked with
most guilt in their faces, but, _nobody_ was the word, nobody did it.
The leader of the caravan sent word, he was well assured it was not
done, by any of our camp; that we were peaceable merchants, travelling
on our business; that we had done no harm to them, or to any one else;
and therefore they must look farther for their enemies, who had injured
them, for we were not the people; so desired them not to disturb us;
for, if they did, we should defend ourselves.
They were far from being satisfied with this for an answer, and a great
crowd of them came down in the morning, by break of day, to our camp;
but, seeing us in such an advantageous situation, they durst come no
farther than the brook in our front, where they stood, and shewed us
such a number, as, indeed, terrified us very much; for those that spoke
least of them, spoke of ten thousand. Here they stood, and looked at us
awhile, and then setting up a great howl, they let fly a cloud of arrows
among us; but we were well enough fortified for that, for we were
sheltered under our baggage; and I do not remember that one man of
us was hurt.
Some time after this we saw them move a little to our right, and
expected them on the rear, when a cunning fellow, a Cossack, as they
call them, of Jarawena, in the pay of the Muscovites, calling to the
leader of the caravan, said to him, “I will send all these people away
to Sibeilka.” This was a city four or five days journey at least to the
south, and rather behind us. So he takes his bow and arrows, and,
getting on horseback, he rides away from our rear directly, as it were,
back to Nertzinskay; after this, he takes a great circuit about, and
comes to the army of the Tartars, as if he had been sent express to tell
them a long story, that the people who had burnt their Cham-Chi-Thaungu
were gone to Sibeilka, with a caravan of miscreants, as he called them;
that is to say, Christians; and that they were resolved to burn the god
Seal Isarg, belonging to the Tonguses.
As this fellow was a mere Tartar, and perfectly spoke their language, he
counterfeited so well, that they all took it from him, and away they
drove, in a most violent hurry, to Sibeilka, which, it seems, was five
days journey to the south; and in less than three hours they were
entirely out of our sight, and we never heard any more of them, nor ever
knew whether they went to that other place called Sibeilka or no.
So we passed safely on to the city of Jarawena, where there was a
garrison of Muscovites; and there we rested five days, the caravan being
exceedingly fatigued with the last day’s march, and with want of rest in
the night.
From this city we had a frightful desert, which held us three-and-twenty
days march. We furnished ourselves with some tents here, for the better
accommodating ourselves in the night; and the leader of the caravan
procured sixteen carriages, or waggons, of the country, for carrying our
water and provisions; and these carriages were our defence every night
round our little camp; so that had the Tartars appeared, unless they had
been very numerous indeed, they would not have been able to hurt us.
We may well be supposed to want rest again after this long journey; for
in this desert we saw neither house or tree, or scarce a bush: we saw,
indeed, abundance of the sable-hunters, as they called them. These are
all Tartars of the Mogul Tartary, of which this country is a part; and
they frequently attack small caravans; but we saw no numbers of them
together. I was curious to see the sable skins they catched; but I could
never speak with any of them; for they durst not come near us; neither
durst we straggle from our company to go near them.
After we had passed this desert, we came into a country pretty well
inhabited; that is to say, we found towns and castles settled by the
czar of Muscovy, with garrisons of stationary soldiers to protect the
caravans, and defend the country against the Tartars, who would
otherwise make it very dangerous travelling; and his czarish majesty has
given such strict orders for the well guarding the caravans and
merchants, that if there are any Tartars heard of in the country,
detachments of the garrison are always sent to see travellers safe from
station to station.
And thus the governor of Adinskoy, whom I had an opportunity to make a
visit to, by means of the Scots merchant, who was acquainted with him,
offered us a guard of fifty men, if we thought there was any danger, to
the next station.
I thought long before this, that as we came nearer to Europe we should
find the country better peopled, and the people more civilized; but I
found myself mistaken in both, for we had yet the nation of the Tonguses
to pass through; where we saw the same tokens of paganism and barbarity,
or worse, than before; only as they were conquered by the Muscovites,
and entirely reduced, they were not so dangerous; but for the rudeness
of manners, idolatry, and polytheism, no people in the world ever went
beyond them. They are clothed all in skins of beasts, and their houses
are built of the same. You know not a man from a woman, neither by the
ruggedness of their countenances, or their clothes; and in the winter,
when the ground is covered with snow, they live under ground, in houses
like vaults, which have cavities or caves going from one to another.
If the Tartars had their Cham-Chi-Thaungu for a whole village, or
country, these had idols in every hut and every cave; besides, they
worship the stars, the sun, the water, the snow; and, in a word, every
thing that they do not understand, and they understand but very little;
so that almost every element, every uncommon thing, sets them
a-sacrificing.
But I am no more to describe people than countries, any farther than my
own story comes to be concerned in them. I met with nothing peculiar to
myself in all this country, which I reckon was, from the desert which I
spoke of last, at least four hundred miles, half of it being another
desert, which took us up twelve days severe travelling, without house,
tree, or bush; but we were obliged again to carry our own provisions, as
well water as bread. After we were out of this desert, and had travelled
two days, we came to Janezay, a Muscovite city or station, on the great
river Janezay. This river, they told us, parted Europe from Asia, though
our map-makers, as I am told, do not agree to it; however, it is
certainly the eastern boundary of the ancient Siberia, which now makes a
province only of the vast Muscovite empire, but is itself equal in
bigness to the whole empire of Germany.
And yet here I observed ignorance and paganism, still prevailed, except
in the Muscovite garrisons. All the country between the river Oby and
the river Janezay is as entirely pagan, and the people as barbarous, as
the remotest of the Tartars; nay, as any nation, for aught I know, in
Asia or America. I also found, which I observed to the Muscovite
governors, whom I had opportunity to converse with, that the pagans are
not much the wiser, or the nearer Christianity, for being under the
Muscovite government; which they acknowledged was true enough, but, they
said, it was none of their business; that if the czar expected to
convert his Siberian, or Tonguese, or Tartar subjects, it should be
done by sending clergymen among them, not soldiers; and they added, with
more sincerity than I expected, that they found it was not so much the
concern of their monarch to make the people Christians, as it was to
make them subjects.
From this river to the great river Oby, we crossed a wild uncultivated
country; I cannot say ’tis a barbarous soil; ’tis only barren of people,
and wants good management; otherwise it is in itself a most pleasant,
fruitful, and agreeable country. What inhabitants we found in it are all
pagans, except such as are sent among them from Russia; for this is the
country, I mean on both sides the river Oby, whither the Muscovite
criminals, that are not put to death, are banished, and from whence it
is next to impossible they should ever come away.
I have nothing material to say of my particular affairs, till I came to
Tobolski, the capital of Siberia, where I continued some time on the
following occasion:—
We had been now almost seven months on our journey, and winter began to
come on apace; whereupon my partner and I called a council about our
particular affairs, in which we found it proper, considering that we
were bound for England, and not for Moscow, to consider how to dispose
of ourselves. They told us of sledges and rein-deer to carry us over the
snow in the winter-time; and, indeed, they have such things, as it would
be incredible to relate the particulars of, by which means the Russians
travel more in the winter than they can in summer; because in these
sledges they are able to run night and day: the snow being frozen, is
one universal covering to nature, by which the hills, the vales, the
rivers, the lakes, are all smooth, and hard as a stone; and they run
upon the surface, without any regard to what is underneath.
But I had no occasion to push at a winter journey of this kind; I was
bound to England, not to Moscow, and my route lay two ways: either I
must go on as the caravan went, till I came to Jarislaw, and then go
off west for Narva, and the gulf of Finland, and so either by sea or
land to Dantzic, where I might possibly sell my China cargo to good
advantage; or I must leave the caravan at a little town on the Dwina,
from whence I had but six days by water to Archangel, and from thence
might be sure of shipping, either to England, Holland, or Hamburgh.
Now to go any of these journies in the winter would have been
preposterous; for as to Dantzic, the Baltic would be frozen up, and I
could not get passage; and to go by land in those countries, was far
less safe than among the Mogul Tartars; likewise to Archangel, in
October all the ships would be gone from thence, and even the merchants,
who dwell there in summer, retire south to Moscow in the winter, when
the ships are gone; so that I should have nothing but extremity of cold
to encounter, with a scarcity of provisions, and must lie there in an
empty town all the winter: so that, upon the whole, I thought it much my
better way to let the caravan go, and to make provision to winter where
I was, viz. at Tobolski, in Siberia, in the latitude of sixty degrees,
where I was sure of three things to wear out a cold winter with, viz.
plenty of provisions, such as the country afforded, a warm house, with
fuel enough, and excellent company; of all which I shall give a full
account in its place.
I was now in a quite different climate from my beloved island, where I
never felt cold, except when I had my ague; on the contrary, I had much
to do to bear my clothes on my back, and never made any fire but without
doors, for my necessity, in dressing my food, &c. Now I made me three
good vests, with large robes or gowns over them, to hang down to the
feet, and button close to the wrists, and all these lined with furs, to
make them sufficiently warm.
As to a warm house, I must confess, I greatly dislike our way in
England, of making fires in every room in the house, in open chimnies,
which, when the fire was out, always kept the air in the room cold as
the climate. But taking an apartment in a good house in the town, I
ordered a chimney to be built like a furnace, in the centre of six
several rooms, like a stove; the funnel to carry the smoke went up one
way, the door to come at the fire went in another, and all the rooms
were kept equally warm, but no fire seen; like as they heat the bagnios
in England.
By this means we had always the same climate in all the rooms, and an
equal heat was preserved; and how cold soever it was without, it was
always warm within; and yet we saw no fire, nor were ever incommoded
with any smoke.
The most wonderful thing of all was, that it should be possible to meet
with good company here, in a country so barbarous as that of the most
northerly part of Europe, near the Frozen ocean, and within but a very
few degrees of Nova Zembla.
But this being the country where the state criminals of Muscovy, as I
observed before, are all banished; this city was full of noblemen,
princes, gentlemen, colonels, and, in short, all degrees of the
nobility, gentry, soldiery, and courtiers of Muscovy. Here were the
famous prince Galilfken, or Galoffken, and his son; the old general
Robostisky, and several other persons of note, and some ladies.
By means of my Scots merchant, whom, nevertheless, I parted with here, I
made an acquaintance with several of these gentlemen, and some of them
of the first rank; and from these, in the long winter nights, in which I
staid here, I received several agreeable visits. It was talking one
night with a certain prince, one of the banished ministers of state
belonging to the czar of Muscovy, that my talk of my particular case
began. He had been telling me abundance of fine things, of the
greatness, the magnificence, and dominions, and the absolute power of
the emperor of the Russians. I interrupted him, and told him, I was a
greater and more powerful prince than ever the czar of Muscovy was,
though my dominions were not so large, or my people so many. The
Russian grandee looked a little surprised, and fixing his eyes steadily
upon me, began to wonder what I meant.
I told him his wonder would cease when I had explained myself. First, I
told him, I had the absolute disposal of the lives and fortunes of all
my subjects: that notwithstanding my absolute power, I had not one
person disaffected to my government or to my person, in all my
dominions. He shook his head at that, and said, there, indeed, I outdid
the czar of Muscovy. I told him, that all the lands in my kingdom were
my own, and all my subjects were not only my tenants, but tenants at
will; that they would all fight for me to the last drop; and that never
tyrant, for such I acknowledged myself to be, was ever so universally
beloved, and yet so horribly feared, by his subjects.
After amusing them with these riddles in government for awhile, I opened
the case, and told them the story at large of my living in the island,
and how I managed both myself and the people there that were under me,
just as I have since minuted it down. They were exceedingly taken with
the story, and especially the prince, who told me with a sigh, that the
true greatness of life was to be master of ourselves; that he would not
have changed such a state of life as mine, to have been czar of Muscovy,
and that he found more felicity in the retirement he seemed to be
banished to there, than ever he found in the highest authority he
enjoyed in the court of his master the czar: that the height of human
wisdom was to bring our tempers down to our circumstances, and to make a
calm within, under the weight of the greatest storm, without. When he
came first hither, he said, he used to tear the hair from his head, and
the clothes from his back, as others had done before him; but a little
time and consideration had made him look into himself, as well as round
himself, to things without: that he found the mind of man, if it was but
once brought to reflect upon the state of universal life, and how
little this world was concerned in its true felicity, was perfectly
capable of making a felicity for itself, fully satisfying to itself, and
suitable to its own best ends and desires, with but very little
assistance from the world; that air to breathe in, food to sustain life,
clothes for warmth, and liberty for exercise, in order to health,
completed, in his opinion, all that the world could do for us: and
though the greatness, the authority, the riches, and the pleasures,
which some enjoyed in the world, and which he had enjoyed his share of,
had much in them that was agreeable to us, yet he observed, that all
those things chiefly gratified the coarsest of our affections; such as
our ambition, our particular pride, our avarice, our vanity, and our
sensuality; all which were, indeed, the mere product of the worst part
of man, were in themselves crimes, and had in them the seeds of all
manner of crimes; but neither were related to, or concerned with, any of
those virtues that constituted us wise men, or of those graces which
distinguished us as Christians; that being now deprived of all the
fancied felicity which he enjoyed in the full exercise of all those
vices, he said, he was at leisure to look upon the dark side of them,
where he found all manner of deformity; and was now convinced, that
virtue only makes a man truly wise, rich, and great, and preserves him
in the way to a superior happiness in a future state; and in this, he
said, they were more happy in their banishment, than all their enemies
were, who had the full possession of all the wealth and power that they
(the banished) had left behind them.
“Nor, Sir,” said he, “do I bring my mind to this politically, by the
necessity of my circumstances, which some call miserable; but if I know
any thing of myself, I would not go back, no not though my master, the
czar, should call me, and offer to reinstate me in all my former
grandeur; I say, I would no more go back to it, than I believe my soul,
when it shall be delivered from this prison of the body, and has had a
taste of the glorious state beyond life, would come back to the gaol of
flesh and blood it is now enclosed in, and leave Heaven to deal in the
dirt and grime of human affairs.”
He spake this with so much warmth in his temper, so much earnestness and
motion of his spirits, which were apparent in his countenance, that it
was evident it was the true sense of his soul; and indeed there was no
room to doubt his sincerity.
I told him, I once thought myself a kind of a monarch in my old station,
of which I had given him an account, but that I thought he was not a
monarch only, but a great conqueror; for that he that has got a victory
over his own exorbitant desires, and has the absolute dominion over
himself, and whose reason entirely governs his will, is certainly
greater than he that conquers a city. “But, my lord,” said I, “shall I
take the liberty to ask you a question?”—“With all my heart,” said he.
“If the door of your liberty was opened,” said I, “would not you take
hold of it to deliver yourself from this exile?”
“Hold,” said he, “your question is subtle, and requires some serious
just distinctions to give it a sincere answer; and I’ll give it you from
the bottom of my heart. Nothing that I know of in this world would move
me to deliver myself from the state of banishment, except these two:
first, the enjoyment of my relations; and secondly, a little warmer
climate. But I protest to you, that to go back to the pomp of the court,
the glory, the power, the hurry of a minister of state; the wealth, the
gaiety, and the pleasures, that is to say, follies of a courtier; if my
master should send me word this moment, that he restores me to all he
banished me from, I protest, if I know myself at all, I would not leave
this wilderness, these deserts, and these frozen lakes, for the palace
of Moscow.”
“But, my lord,” said I, “perhaps you not only are banished from the
pleasures of the court, and from the power, and authority, and wealth,
you enjoyed before, but you may be absent too from some of the
conveniencies of life; your estate, perhaps, confiscated, and your
effects plundered; and the supplies left you here may not be suitable to
the ordinary demands of life.”
“Ay,” said he, “that is, as you suppose me to be a lord, or a prince,
&c. So indeed I am; but you are now to consider me only as a man, a
human creature, not at all distinguished from another; and so I can
suffer no want, unless I should be visited with sickness and distempers.
However, to put the question out of dispute; you see our manner; we are
in this place five persons of rank; we live perfectly retired; as suited
to a state of banishment; we have something rescued from the shipwreck
of our fortunes, which keeps us from the mere necessity of hunting for
our food; but the poor soldiers who are here, without that help, live in
as much plenty as we. They go into the woods, and catch sables and
foxes; the labour of a month will maintain them a year; and as the way
of living is not expensive, so it is not hard to get sufficient to
ourselves: so that objection is out of doors.”
I have no room to give a full account of the most agreeable conversation
I had with this truly great man; in all which he shewed, that his mind
was so inspired with a superior knowledge of things, so supported by
religion, as well as by a vast share of wisdom, that his contempt of the
world was really as much as he had expressed, and that he was always the
same to the last, as will appear in the story I am going to tell.
I had been here eight months, and a dark dreadful winter I thought it to
be. The cold was so intense, that I could not so much as look abroad
without being wrapt in furs, and a mask of fur before my face, or rather
a hood, with only a hole for breath, and two for sight. The little
daylight we had, as we reckoned, for three months, not above five hours
a day, or six at most; only that the snow lying on the ground
continually, and the weather being clear, it was never quite dark. Our
horses were kept (or rather starved) under ground; and as for our
servants, (for we hired servants here to look after our horses and
ourselves) we had every now and then their fingers and toes to thaw, and
take care of, lest they should mortify and fall off.