otherwise make it very dangerous travelling; and his czarish
majesty has given such strict orders for the well guarding the
caravans, that, if there are any Tartars heard of in the country,
detachments of the garrison are always sent to see the travellers
safe from station to station. 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 inhabited, and the people more
civilised; 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 as before; only, as they were
conquered by the Muscovites, they were not so dangerous, but for
rudeness of manners and idolatry no people in the world ever went
beyond them. They are all clothed 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 nor their clothes;
and in the winter, when the ground is covered with snow, they live
underground in vaults, which have cavities 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.
This country, I reckon, was, from the desert 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 or tree;
and 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, which, they told us there, parted Europe from
Asia.
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. I also found, which I observed to the Muscovite governors
whom I had an opportunity to converse with, that the poor pagans
are not much wiser, or nearer Christianity, for being under the
Muscovite government, which they acknowledged was true enough – but
that, as they said, was none of their business; that if the Czar
expected to convert his Siberian, Tonguse, or Tartar subjects, it
should be done by sending clergymen among them, not soldiers; and
they added, with more sincerity than I expected, that it was not so
much the concern of their monarch to make the people Christians as
to make them subjects.
From this river to the Oby we crossed a wild uncultivated country,
barren of people and good management, otherwise it is in itself a
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
get away. I have nothing material to say of my particular affairs
till I came to Tobolski, the capital city of Siberia, where I
continued some time on the following account.
We had now been 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, as we
were bound for England, to consider how to dispose of ourselves.
They told us of sledges and reindeer to carry us over the snow in
the winter time, by which means, indeed, the Russians travel more
in winter than they can in summer, as 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, vales, rivers,
and lakes are all smooth and hard is a stone, and they run upon the