surface, without any regard to what is underneath.
But I had no occasion to urge 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 on 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 Hamburg.
Now, to go any one of these journeys in the winter would have been
preposterous; for as to Dantzic, the Baltic would have been 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,
as 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
could have nothing but extremity of cold to encounter, with a
scarcity of provisions, and must lie in an empty town all the
winter. Therefore, upon the whole, I thought it much my better way
to let the caravan go, and make provision to winter where I was, at
Tobolski, in Siberia, in the latitude of about 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.
I was now in quite a 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 any clothes on my back, and
never made any fire but without doors, which was necessary for
dressing my food, &c. Now I had 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 of the
house in open chimneys, which, when the fire is out, always keeps
the air in the room cold as the climate. So I took an apartment in
a good house in the town, and 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, just as they heat baths in England. By this means we
had always the same climate in all the rooms, and an equal heat was
preserved, and yet we saw no fire, nor were ever incommoded with
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 this –
one of the most northerly parts of Europe. But this being the
country where the state criminals of Muscovy, as I observed before,
are all banished, the city was full of Russian noblemen, gentlemen,
soldiers, and courtiers. Here was the famous Prince Galitzin, the
old German Robostiski, and several other persons of note, and some
ladies. By means of my Scotch merchant, whom, nevertheless, I
parted with here, I made an acquaintance with several of these
gentlemen; and from these, in the long winter nights in which I
stayed here, I received several very agreeable visits.
CHAPTER XVI – SAFE ARRIVAL IN ENGLAND
IT was talking one night with a certain prince, one of the banished
ministers of state belonging to the Czar, that the discourse of my
particular case began. He had been telling me abundance of fine
things of the greatness, the magnificence, the dominions, and the