by Daniel Defoe
God'smost glorious and best creature, to whom he had granted so manyadvantages, even by creation, above the rest of the works of his hands,vested with a reasonable soul, and that soul adorned with faculties andcapacities adapted both to honour his Maker and be honoured by him; Isay, to see it sunk and degenerated to a degree so more than stupid, asto prostrate itself to a frightful nothing, a mere imaginary objectdressed up by themselves, and made terrible to themselves by their owncontrivance, adorned only with clouts and rags; and that this should bethe effect of mere ignorance, wrought up into hellish devotion by thedevil himself; who, envying his Maker the homage and adoration of hiscreatures, had deluded them into such gross, surfeiting, sordid, andbrutish things, as one would think should shock nature itself.
But what signified all the astonishment and reflection of thoughts? Thusit was, and I saw it before my eyes; and there was no room to wonder atit, or think it impossible. All my admiration turned to rage; and I rodeup to the image or monster, call it what you will, and with my sword cutthe bonnet that was on its head in two in the middle, so that it hungdown by one of the horns; and one of our men that was with me, took holdof the sheep skin that covered it, and pulled at it, when, behold, amost hideous outcry and howling ran through the village, and two orthree hundred people came about my ears, so that I was glad to scour forit; for we saw some had bows and arrows; but I resolved from that momentto visit them again.
Our caravan rested three nights at the town, which was about four milesoff, in order to provide some horses, which they wanted, several of thehorses having been lamed and jaded with the badness of the way, and ourlong march over the last desert; so we had some leisure here to put mydesign in execution. I communicated my project to the Scots merchant, ofMoscow, of whose courage I had had a sufficient testimony, as above. Itold him what I had seen, and with what indignation I had since thoughtthat human nature could be so degenerate. I told him, I was resolved,if I could get but four or five men well armed to go with me, to go anddestroy that vile, abominable idol; to let them see, that it had nopower to help itself, and consequently could not be an object ofworship, or to be prayed to, much less help them that offeredsacrifices to it.
He laughed at me: said he, "Your zeal may be good; but what do youpropose to yourself by it?"--"Propose!" said I: "to vindicate thehonour of God, which is insulted by this devil-worship."--"But how willit vindicate the honour of God," said he, "while the people will not beable to know what you mean by it, unless you could speak to them too,and tell them so? and then they will fight you too, I will assure you,for they are desperate fellows, and that especially in defence of theiridolatry."--"Can we not," said I, "do it in the night, and then leavethem the reasons in writing, in their own language?"--"Writing!" saidhe; "why, there is not in five nations of them one man that knows anything of a letter, or how to read a word in any language, or in theirown."--"Wretched ignorance!" said I to him: "however, I have a greatmind to do it; perhaps nature may draw inferences from it to them, tolet them see how brutish they are to worship such horrid things."--"Lookyou, Sir," said he; "if your zeal prompts you to it so warmly, you mustdo it; but in the next place, I would have you consider these wildnations of people are subjected by force to the czar of Muscovy'sdominion; and if you do this, it is ten to one but they will come bythousands to the governor of Nertzinskay, and complain, and demandsatisfaction; and if he cannot give them satisfaction, it is ten to onebut they revolt; and it will occasion a new war with all the Tartars inthe country."
This, I confess, put new thoughts into my head for a while; but I harpedupon the same string still; and all that day I was uneasy to put myproject in execution. Towards the evening the Scots merchant met me byaccident in our walk about the town, and desired to speak with me: "Ibelieve," said he, "I have put you off your good design; I have been alittle concerned about it since; for I abhor the idol and idolatry asmuch as you can do."--"Truly," said I, "you have put it off a little, asto the execution of it, but you have not put it all out of my thoughts;and, I believe, I shall do it still before I quit this place, though Iwere to be delivered up to them for satisfaction."--"No, no," said he,"God forbid they should deliver you up to such a crew of monsters! theyshall not do that neither; that would be murdering you indeed."--"Why,"said I, "how would they use me?"--"Use you!" said he: "I'll tell you howthey served a poor Russian, who affronted them in their worship just asyou did, and whom they took prisoner, after they had lamed him with anarrow, that he could not run away: they took him and stripped him starknaked, and set him upon the top of the idol monster, and stood all roundhim, and shot as many arrows into him as would stick over his wholebody; and then they burnt him, and all the arrows sticking in him, as asacrifice to the idol."--"And was this the same idol:" said I.--"Yes,"said he, "the very same."--"Well," said I, "I will tell you a story." SoI related the story of our men at Madagascar, and how they burnt andsacked the village there, and killed man, woman, and child, for theirmurdering one of our men, just as it is related before; and when I haddone, I added, that I thought we ought to do so to this village.
He listened very attentively to the story; but when I talked of doing soto that village, said he, "You mistake very much; it was not thisvillage, it was almost a hundred miles from this place; but it was thesame idol, for they carry him about in procession all over thecountry."--"Well," said I, "then that idol ought to be punished for it;and it shall," said I, "if I live this night out."
In a word, finding me resolute, he liked the design, and told me, Ishould not go alone, but he would go with me; but he would go first,and bring a stout fellow, one of his countrymen, to go also with us;"and one," said he, "as famous for his zeal as you can desire any one tobe against such devilish things as these." In a word, he brought me hiscomrade a Scotsman, whom he called Captain Richardson; and I gave him afull account of what I had seen, and also what I intended; and he toldme readily, he would go with me, if it cost him his life. So we agreedto go, only we three. I had, indeed, proposed it to my partner, but hedeclined it. He said, he was ready to assist me to the utmost, and uponall occasions, for my defence; but that this was an adventure quite outof his way: so, I say, we resolved upon our work, only we three, and myman-servant, and to put it in execution that night about midnight, withall the secresy imaginable.
However, upon second thoughts, we were willing to delay it till the nextnight, because the caravan being to set forward in the morning, wesupposed the governor could not pretend to give them any satisfactionupon us when we were out of his power. The Scots merchant, as steady inhis resolution to enterprise it as bold in executing, brought me aTartar's robe or gown of sheep-skins, and a bonnet, with a bow andarrows, and had provided the same for himself and his countryman, thatthe people, if they saw us, should not be able to determine who we were.
All the first night we spent in mixing up some combustible matter withaqua-vitae, gunpowder, and such other materials as we could get; and,having a good quantity of tar in a little pot, about an hour after nightwe set out upon our expedition.
We came to the place about eleven o'clock at night, and found that thepeople had not the least jealousy of danger attending their idol. Thenight was cloudy; yet the moon gave us light enough to see that the idolstood just in the same posture and place that it did before. The peopleseemed to be all at their rest; only, that in the great hut, or tent aswe called it, where we saw the three priests, whom we mistook forbutchers, we saw a light, and going up close to the door, we heardpeople talking, as if there were five or six of them; we concluded,therefore, that if we set wildfire to the idol, these men would come outimmediately, and run up to the place to rescue it from the destructionthat we intended for it; and what to do with them we knew not. Once wethought of carrying it away, and setting fire to it at a distance, butwhen we came to handle it we found it too bulky for our carriage; so wewere at a loss again. The second Scotsman was for setting fire to thetent or hut, and knocking the creatures that were there on the head,when they came out; but I could not join with that;
I was againstkilling them, if it was possible to be avoided. "Well then," said theScots merchant, "I will tell you what we will do; we will try to makethem prisoners, tie their hands, and make them stand and see their idoldestroyed."
As it happened, we had twine or packthread enough about us, which weused to tie our fire-works together with; so we resolved to attack thesepeople first, and with as little noise as we could. The first thing wedid, we knocked at the door, when one of the priests coming to it, weimmediately seized upon him, stopped his mouth, and tied his handsbehind him, and led him to the idol, where we gagged him that he mightnot
