Two days after we came to the city of Naun, or Naum we thanked thegovernor for his care of us, and collected to the value of ahundred crowns, or thereabouts, which we gave to the soldiers sentto guard us and here we rested one day.This is a garrisonindeed, and there were nine hundred soldiers kept here but thereason of it was, that formerly the Muscovite frontiers lay nearerto them than they now do, the Muscovites having abandoned that partof the country, which lies from this city west for about twohundred miles, as desolate and unfit for use and more especiallybeing so very remote, and so difficult to send troops thither forits defence for we were yet above two thousand miles from Muscovyproperly so called.After this we passed several great rivers, andtwo dreadful deserts one of which we were sixteen days passingover and on the 13th of April we came to the frontiers of theMuscovite dominions.I think the first town or fortress, whicheverit may he called, that belonged to the Czar, was called Arguna,being on the west side of the river Arguna.Īt last the Tartars came on, and an innumerable company they were how many we could not tell, but ten thousand, we thought, at theleast.A party of them came on first, and viewed our posture,traversing the ground in the front of our line and, as we foundthem within gunshot, our leader ordered the two wings to advanceswiftly, and give them a salvo on each wing with their shot, whichwas done.They then went off, I suppose to give an account of thereception they were like to meet with indeed, that salute cloyedtheir stomachs, for they immediately halted, stood a while toconsider of it, and wheeling off to the left, they gave over theirdesign for that time, which was very agreeable to ourcircumstances.Īs it happened, we had twine or packthread enough about us, whichwe used to tie our firelocks together with so we resolved toattack these people first, and with as little noise as we could.The first thing we did, we knocked at the door, when one of thepriests coming to it, we immediately seized upon him, stopped hismouth, and tied his hands behind him, and led him to the idol,where we gagged him that he might not make a noise, tied his feetalso together, and left him on the ground. This scarecrow was set up at the outer side of the village andwhen I came near to it there were sixteen or seventeen creaturesall lying flat upon the ground round this hideous block of wood Isaw 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, andraised a howl, as if it had been so many deepmouthed hounds, andwalked away, as if they were displeased at our disturbing them.Alittle way off from the idol, and at the door of a hut, made ofsheep and cow skins dried, stood three men with long knives intheir hands and in the middle of the tent appeared three sheepkilled, and one young bullock.These, it seems, were sacrifices tothat senseless log of an idol the three men were priests belongingto it, and the seventeen prostrated wretches were the people whobrought the offering, and were offering their prayers to thatstock.
We now launched into the greatest piece of solid earth that is tobe found in any part of the world we had, at least, twelvethousand miles to the sea eastward two thousand to the bottom ofthe Baltic Sea westward and above three thousand, if we left thatsea, and went on west, to the British and French channels:we hadfull five thousand miles to the Indian or Persian Sea south andabout eight hundred to the Frozen Sea north.
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