running into the river Dwina, we were there very happily near the end of
our travels by land, that river being navigable in seven days passage to
Archangel. From hence we came to Lawrenskoy, where the river joins, the
third of July; and provided ourselves with two luggage-boats, and a
barge, for our convenience. We embarked the seventh, and arrived all
safe at Archangel the eighteenth, having been a year, five months, and
three days on the journey, including our stay of eight months and odd
days at Tobolski.
We were obliged to stay at this place six weeks for the arrival of the
ships, and must have tarried longer, had not a Hamburgher come in above
a month sooner than any of the English ships; when after some
consideration, that the city of Hamburgh might happen to be as good a
market for our goods as London, we all took freight with him; and
having put our goods on board, it was most natural for me to put my
steward, on board to take care of them; by which means my young lord had
a sufficient opportunity to conceal himself, never coming on shore again
in all the time we staid there; and this he did, that he might not be
seen in the city, where some of the Moscow merchants would certainly
have seen and discovered him.
We sailed from Archangel the twentieth of August the same year; and,
after no extraordinary bad voyage, arrived in the Elbe the thirteenth of
September. Here my partner and I found a very good sale for our goods,
as well those of China, as the sables, &c. of Siberia; and dividing the
produce of our effects my share amounted to 3475_l_. 17_s_. 3_d_.
notwithstanding so many losses we had sustained, and charges we had been
at; only remembering that I had included, in this, about 600_l_. worth
of diamonds, which I had purchased at Bengal.
Here the young lord took his leave of us, and went up to the Elbe, in
order to go to the court of Vienna, where he resolved to seek
protection, and where he could correspond with those of his father’s
friends who were left alive. He did not part without all the testimonies
he could give of gratitude for the service I had done him, and his sense
of my kindness to the prince his father.
To conclude: having staid near four months in Hamburgh, I came from
thence over land to the Hague, where I embarked in the packet, and
arrived in London the tenth of January 1705, having been gone from
England ten years and nine months.
And here, resolving to harass myself no more, I am preparing for a
longer journey than all these, having lived seventy-two years a life of
infinite variety, and learnt sufficiently to know the value of
retirement, and the blessing of ending our days in peace.