travellers. Thus it was here; for wherever we came, though at
these towns and stations the garrisons and governors were Russians,
and professed Christians, yet the inhabitants were 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 men’s flesh.
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 Nortziousky, in which is a continued
desert or forest, which cost us twenty days to travel over. In a
village near the last of these 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, a diabolical kind of idol made of
wood; it was dressed up, too, in the most filthy manner; its upper
garment was of sheepskins, 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, nor any other proportion
of parts.
This scarecrow was set up at the outer side of the village; and
when I came near to it there were sixteen or seventeen creatures
all lying flat upon the ground round this hideous block of wood; I
saw no motion among them, any more than if they had been all logs,
like the idol, and 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 howl, 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 the idol, and at the door of a hut, made of
sheep and cow skins dried, stood three men with long knives in
their hands; and in the middle of the tent appeared three sheep
killed, and one young bullock. These, it seems, were sacrifices to
that senseless log of an idol; the three men were priests belonging
to it, and the seventeen prostrated wretches were the people who
brought the offering, and were offering their prayers to that
stock.
I confess I was more moved at their stupidity and brutish worship
of a hobgoblin than ever I was at anything in my life, and,
overcome with rage, I rode up to the hideous idol, and with my
sword made a stroke at the bonnet that was on its head, and cut it
in two; and one of our men that was with me, taking hold of the
sheepskin that covered it, pulled at it, when, behold, a most
hideous outcry ran through the village, and two or three hundred
people came about my ears, so that I was glad to scour for it, for
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
long march over the last desert; so we had some leisure here to put
my design in execution. I communicated it to the Scots merchant,
of whose courage I had sufficient testimony; 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 if I could get but four
or five men well armed to go with me, I was resolved to go and
destroy that vile, abominable idol, and 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 at first objected to my plan as useless, seeing that, owing to
the gross ignorance of the people, they could not be brought to