The Life and Adventures of Robinson Crusoe (1808)

by Daniel Defoe

this for an answer, and a greatcrowd of them came down in the morning, by break of day, to our camp;but, seeing us in such an advantageous situation, they durst come nofarther than the brook in our front, where they stood, and shewed ussuch a number, as, indeed, terrified us very much; for those that spokeleast of them, spoke of ten thousand. Here they stood, and looked at usawhile, and then setting up a great howl, they let fly a cloud of arrowsamong us; but we were well enough fortified for that, for we weresheltered under our baggage; and I do not remember that one man ofus was hurt.

  Some time after this we saw them move a little to our right, andexpected them on the rear, when a cunning fellow, a Cossack, as theycall them, of Jarawena, in the pay of the Muscovites, calling to theleader of the caravan, said to him, "I will send all these people awayto Sibeilka." This was a city four or five days journey at least to thesouth, 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 Nertzinskay; after this, he takes a great circuit about, andcomes to the army of the Tartars, as if he had been sent express to tellthem a long story, that the people who had burnt their Cham-Chi-Thaunguwere gone to Sibeilka, with a caravan of miscreants, as he called them;that is to say, Christians; and that they were resolved to burn the godSeal Isarg, belonging to the Tonguses.

  As this fellow was a mere Tartar, and perfectly spoke their language, hecounterfeited so well, that they all took it from him, and away theydrove, in a most violent hurry, to Sibeilka, which, it seems, was fivedays journey to the south; and in less than three hours they wereentirely out of our sight, and we never heard any more of them, nor everknew whether they went to that other place called Sibeilka or no.

  So we passed safely on to the city of Jarawena, where there was agarrison of Muscovites; and there we rested five days, the caravan beingexceedingly fatigued with the last day's march, and with want of rest inthe night.

  From this city we had a frightful desert, which held us three-and-twentydays march. We furnished ourselves with some tents here, for the betteraccommodating ourselves in the night; and the leader of the caravanprocured sixteen carriages, or waggons, of the country, for carrying ourwater and provisions; and these carriages were our defence every nightround our little camp; so that had the Tartars appeared, unless they hadbeen very numerous indeed, they would not have been able to hurt us.

  We may well be supposed to want rest again after this long journey; forin this desert we saw neither house or tree, or scarce a bush: we saw,indeed, abundance of the sable-hunters, as they called them. These areall Tartars of the Mogul Tartary, of which this country is a part; andthey frequently attack small caravans; but we saw no numbers of themtogether. I was curious to see the sable skins they catched; but I couldnever speak with any of them; for they durst not come near us; neitherdurst we straggle from our company to go near them.

  After we had passed this desert, we came into a country pretty wellinhabited; that is to say, we found towns and castles settled by theczar of Muscovy, with garrisons of stationary soldiers to protect thecaravans, and defend the country against the Tartars, who wouldotherwise make it very dangerous travelling; and his czarish majesty hasgiven such strict orders for the well guarding the caravans andmerchants, that if there are any Tartars heard of in the country,detachments of the garrison are always sent to see travellers safe fromstation to station.

  And thus the governor of Adinskoy, whom I had an opportunity to make avisit 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, tothe next station.

  I thought long before this, that as we came nearer to Europe we shouldfind the country better peopled, and the people more civilized; but Ifound myself mistaken in both, for we had yet the nation of the Tongusesto pass through; where we saw the same tokens of paganism and barbarity,or worse, than before; only as they were conquered by the Muscovites,and entirely reduced, they were not so dangerous; but for the rudenessof manners, idolatry, and polytheism, no people in the world ever wentbeyond them. They are clothed all in skins of beasts, and their housesare built of the same. You know not a man from a woman, neither by theruggedness of their countenances, or their clothes; and in the winter,when the ground is covered with snow, they live under ground, in houseslike vaults, which have cavities or caves going from one to another.

  If the Tartars had their Cham-Chi-Thaungu for a whole village, orcountry, these had idols in every hut and every cave; besides, theyworship the stars, the sun, the water, the snow; and, in a word, everything that they do not understand, and they understand but very little;so that almost every element, every uncommon thing, sets thema-sacrificing.

  But I am no more to describe people than countries, any farther than myown story comes to be concerned in them. I met with nothing peculiar tomyself in all this country, which I reckon was, from the desert which Ispoke of last, at least four hundred miles, half of it being anotherdesert, which took us up twelve days severe travelling, without house,tree, or bush; but we were obliged again to carry our own provisions, aswell water as bread. After we were out of this desert, and had travelledtwo days, we came to Janezay, a Muscovite city or station, on the greatriver Janezay. This river, they told us, parted Europe from Asia, thoughour map-makers, as I am told, do not agree to it; however, it iscertainly the eastern boundary of the ancient Siberia, which now makes aprovince only of the vast Muscovite empire, but is itself equal inbigness to the whole empire of Germany.

  And yet here I observed ignorance and paganism, still prevailed, exceptin the Muscovite garrisons. All the country between the river Oby andthe river Janezay is as entirely pagan, and the people as barbarous, asthe remotest of the Tartars; nay, as any nation, for aught I know, inAsia or America. I also found, which I observed to the Muscovitegovernors, whom I had opportunity to converse with, that the pagans arenot much the wiser, or the nearer Christianity, for being under theMuscovite government; which they acknowledged was true enough, but, theysaid, it was none of their business; that if the czar expected toconvert his Siberian, or Tonguese, or Tartar subjects, it should bedone by sending clergymen among them, not soldiers; and they added, withmore sincerity than I expected, that they found it was not so much theconcern of their monarch to make the people Christians, as it was tomake them subjects.

  From this river to the great river Oby, we crossed a wild uncultivatedcountry; I cannot say 'tis a barbarous soil; 'tis only barren of people,and wants good management; otherwise it is in itself a most pleasant,fruitful, and agreeable country. What inhabitants we found in it are allpagans, except such as are sent among them from Russia; for this is thecountry, I mean on both sides the river Oby, whither the Muscovitecriminals, that are not put to death, are banished, and from whence itis next to impossible they should ever come away.

  I have nothing material to say of my particular affairs, till I came toTobolski, the capital of Siberia, where I continued some time on thefollowing occasion:--

  We had been now almost seven months on our journey, and winter began tocome on apace; whereupon my partner and I called a council about ourparticular affairs, in which we found it proper, considering that wewere bound for England, and not for Moscow, to consider how to disposeof ourselves. They told us of sledges and rein-deer to carry us over thesnow in the winter-time; and, indeed, they have such things, as it wouldbe incredible to relate the particulars of, by which means the Russianstravel more in the winter than they can in summer; because in thesesledges they are able to run night and day: the snow being frozen, isone universal covering to nature, by which the hills, the vales, therivers, the lakes, are all smooth, and hard as a stone; and they runupon the surface, without any regard to what is underneath.

  But I had no occasion to push at a winter journey of this kind; I wasbound to England, not to Moscow, and my route lay two ways: either Imust go on as the caravan went, till I came to Jarislaw, and then gooff west for Narva, and the gulf of Finland, and so either by sea orland to Dan
tzic, where I might possibly sell my China cargo to goodadvantage; 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 thencemight be sure of shipping, either to England, Holland, or Hamburgh.

  Now to go any of these journies in the winter would have beenpreposterous; for as to Dantzic, the Baltic would be frozen up, and Icould not get passage; and to go by land in those countries, was farless safe than among the Mogul Tartars; likewise to Archangel, inOctober all the ships would be gone from thence, and even the merchants,who dwell there in summer, retire south to Moscow in the winter, whenthe ships are gone; so that I should have nothing but extremity of coldto encounter, with a scarcity of provisions, and must lie there in anempty town all the winter: so that, upon the whole, I thought it much mybetter way to let the caravan go, and to make provision to winter whereI was, viz. at Tobolski, in Siberia, in the latitude of sixty degrees,where I was sure of three things