A little

as if they were displeased at our disturbing them. way off from the idol, and at the door of a tent or hut, made all of sheep-skins and cows-skins dried, stood three butchers, —I thought they were such; when I came nearer to them, I found they had long knives in their hands; and in the middle of the tent appeared three sheep killed, and one young bullock or steer. 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 making 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 any thing in my life; to see God's most glorious and best creature, to whom he had granted so many advantages, even by creation above the rest of the works of his hands, vested with a reasonable soul, and that soul adorned with faculties and capacities adapted both to honour his Maker and be honoured by him, sunk and degenerated to a degree so very stupid as to prostrate itself to a frightful nothing, a mere imaginary object, dressed up by themselves, and made terrible to themselves by their own contrivance, adorned only with clouts and rags; and that this should be the effect of mere ignorance, wrought up into hellish devotion by the devil himself; who, envying to his Maker the homage and adoration of his creatures, had deluded them into such sordid and brutish things as one would think should shock nature itself!

But what signified all the astonishment and reflection of thoughts; thus it was, and I saw it before my eyes, and there was no room to wonder at it, or think it impossible: all my admiration turned to rage, and I rode up to the image or monster, call it what you will, 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 took hold of the sheep-skin that covered it, and pulled at it; when, behold, a most hideous outcry and howling ran through the village, and two or three hundred people came about my ears, so that I was glad to scour for it, for we saw 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 badness of the way, and long march over the last desert; so we had some leisure here to put my design in execution. I communicated my design to the Scots merchant

of Moscow, 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.

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He laughed at me :—says he, "Your zeal may be good, but what do you propose to yourself by it?"—" Propose !" said I," to vindicate the honour of God, which is insulted by this devil-worship."- -"But how will it vindicate the honour of God," said he," while the people will not be able to know what you mean by it, unless you could speak to them, and tell them so? and then they will fight you, and beat you too, I'l assure you; for they are desperate fellows, and that especially in defence of their idolatry."—" Can we not," said I, "do it in the night, and then leave them the reasons and the causes in writing in their own language?"—" Writing!" said he; why there is not a man in five nations of them that knows any thing of a letter, or how to read a word any way."— "Wretched ignorance!" said I to him: " however, I have a great mind to do it; perhaps nature may draw inferences from it to them, to let them see how brutish they are to worship such horrid things."—" Look you, Sir," said he, " if your zeal prompts you to it so warmly, you must do it; but, in the next place, I would have you consider, these wild nations of people are subjected by force to the Czar of Muscovy's dominion, and you do this, it is ten to one but they will come by thousands to the governor of Nertsinskay, and demand satisfaction; and if he cannot give them satisfaction, it is ten to one but they revolt; and it will occasion a new war with all the Tartars in the country."

if

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This, I confess, put new thoughts into my head for a while, but I still found that my inclination increased for executing the project I had been forming to destroy the monster, if it were possible to do it with any safety and upon meeting the Scots merchant by accident the next evening, and consulting him again, I found he was grown as earnest for it as myself; so we sat down to contrive how we should effectually execute our purpose: and when we had laid the scheme to our minds, with the assistance of a trusty companion, and a servant or two, we went out privately, and came up to their priests in the night; and then, by a stratagem, having confined

them and their attendants in their house or tent, we stuffed wild-fire in the filthy idol's mouth and ears; and, with the addition of other combustible stuff, we burned the rightful image to ashes, without being apprehended.

After the feat was performed, we appeared in the morning among our fellow-travellers, exceedingly busy in getting ready for our journey; nor could any man suggest that we had been any where but in our beds, as travellers might be supposed to be, to fit themselves for the fatigues of the day's journey.

But the affair did not end so; the next day came a great number of the country people to the town-gates, and in a most outrageous manner demanded satisfaction of the Russian governor for the insulting their priests, and burning their great Cham Chi-Thaungu. The people of Nertsinskay were at first in a great consternation, for they said the Tartars were already no less than thirty thousand strong. The Russian governo sent out messengers to appease them, and gave them all the good words imaginable; assuring them that he knew nothing of it, and that there had not a soul in his garrison been abroad, so that it could not be from any body there; but if they could let him know who did it, they should be exemplarily punished. They returned haughtily that all the country reverenced the great Cham Chi-Thaungu, who dwelt in the sun, and no mortal would have dared to offer violence to his image but some Christian miscreant; and they therefore resolved to denounce war against him and all the Russians, who, they said, were miscreants and Christians.

The governor, still patient, and unwilling to make a breach, or to have any cause of war alleged to be given by him, the Czar having strictly charged them to treat the conquered country with gentleness and civility, gave them still all the good words he could. At last he told them there was a caravan gone towards Russia that morning, and perhaps it was some of them who had done them this injury; and that if they would be satisfied with that, he would send after them to inquire into it. This seemed to appease them a little; and accordingly the governor sent after us, and gave us a particular account how the thing was; intimating withal, that if any in our caravan had done it, they should make their escape; but that whether we had done it or no, we should make all the haste forward that was possible; and that, in the mean time, he would keep them in play as long as he could.

This was very friendly in the governor; however, when it came to the caravan, there was nobody knew any thing of the

matter; and as for us that were guilty, we were the least of all suspected. However, the captain of the caravan for the time took the hint that the governor gave us, and we travelled two days and two nights without any considerable stop, and then we lay at a village called Plothus: nor did we make any long stop here, but hastened on towards Jarawena, another of the Czar of Muscovy's colonies, and where we expected we should be safe. But upon the second day's march from Plothus, by the clouds of dust behind us at a great distance, some of our people began to be sensible we were pursued. We had entered a great desert, and had passed by a great lake called Schaks Oser, when we perceived a very great body of horse appear on the other side of the lake, to the north, we travelling west. We observed they went away west, as we did, but had supposed we would have taken that side of the lake, whereas we very happily took the south side; and in two days more they disappeared again: for they believing we were still before them, pushed on till they came to the river Udda, a very great river when it passes farther north, but where we came to it we found it narrow and fordable.

The third day, they had either found their mistake, or had intelligence of us, and came pouring in upon us towards the dusk of the evening. We had, to our great satisfaction, just pitched upon a place for our camp which was very convenient for the night; for as we were upon a desert, though but at the beginning of it, that was above five hundred miles over, we had no towns to lodge at, and, indeed, expected none but the city Jarawena, which we had yet two days march to; the desert, however, had some few woods in it on this side, and little rivers, which ran all into the great river Udda; it was in a narrow strait, between little, but very thick woods, that we pitched our little camp for that night, expecting to be attacked before morning.

Nobody knew but ourselves what we were pursued for: but as it was usual for the Mogul Tartars to go about in troops in that desert, so the caravans always fortify themselves every night against them, as against armies of robbers; and it was therefore no new thing to be pursued.

But we had this night, of all the nights of our travels, a most advantageous camp; for we lay between two woods with a little rivulet running just before our front, so that we could not be surrounded, or attacked any way but in our front or rear. We took care also to make our front as strong as we could, by placing our packs, with our camels and horses,

all in a line, on the inside of the river, and felling some trees in our rear.

In this posture we encamped for the night; but the enemy was upon us before we had finished our situation. They did not come on us like thieves, as we expected, but sent three messengers to us, to demand the men to be delivered to them that had abused their priests, and burned their god Cham ChiThaungu with fire, that they might burn them with fire; and upon this, they said, they would go away, and do us no farther harm, otherwise they would destroy us all. Our men

looked very blank at this message, and began to stare at one another, to see who looked with the most guilt in their faces: but, nobody was the word; nobody did it. The leader of the caravan sent word he was well assured that it was not done by any of our camp; that we were peaceable merchants, travelling on our business; that we had done no harm to them or to any one else; and that, therefore, they must look farther for their enemies who had injured them, for we were not the people; so desired them not to disturb us, for, if they did, we should defend ourselves.

They were far from being satisfied with this for an answer; and a great crowd of them came running down in the morning, by break of day, to our camp; but seeing us in such an unaccountable situation, they durst come no farther than the brook in our front, where they stood, and showed us such a number that indeed terrified us very much; for those that spoke least of them spoke of ten thousand. Here they stood and looked at us a while, and then setting up a great howl, they let fly a cloud of arrows among us; but we were well enough fortified for that, for we sheltered under our baggage, and I do not remember that one of us was hurt.

Some time after this, we saw them move a little to our right, and expected them on the rear; when a cunning fellow, a Cossack of Jarawena, in the pay of the Muscovites, calling to the leader of the caravan, said to him, "I'll go send all these people away to Siheilka;" this was a city four or five days journey, at least, to the right, and rather behind us. So he takes his bow and arrows, and getting on horseback, he rides away from our rear directly, as it were back to Nertsinskay; after this, he takes a great circuit about, and comes directly on the army of the Tartars, as if he had been sent express to tell them a long story, that the people who had burnt the Cham Chi-Thaungu were gone to Siheilka, with a caravan of mis