by Daniel Defoe
did before. The people seemed to be all at their rest; only that
in the great hut, where we saw the three priests, we saw a light,
and going up close to the door, we heard people talking as if there
were five or six of them; we concluded, therefore, that if we set
wildfire to the idol, those men would come out immediately, and run
up to the place to rescue it from destruction; and what to do with
them we knew not. Once we thought of carrying it away, and setting
fire to it at a distance; but when we came to handle it, we found
it too bulky for our carriage, so we were at a loss again. The
second Scotsman was for setting fire to the hut, and knocking the
creatures that were there on the head when they came out; but I
could not join with that; I was against killing them, if it were
possible to avoid it. "Well, then," said the Scots merchant, "I
will tell you what we will do: we will try to make them prisoners,
tie their hands, and make them stand and see their idol destroyed."
As it happened, we had twine or packthread enough about us, which
we used to tie our firelocks together with; so we resolved to
attack these people first, and with as little noise as we could.
The first thing we did, we knocked at the door, when one of the
priests coming to it, we immediately seized upon him, stopped his
mouth, 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 feet
also together, and left him on the ground.
Two of us then waited at the door, expecting that another would
come out to see what the matter was; but we waited so long till the
third man came back to us; and then nobody coming out, we knocked
again gently, and immediately out came two more, and we served them
just in the same manner, but were obliged to go all with them, and
lay them down by the idol some distance from one another; when,
going back, we found two more were come out of the door, and a
third stood behind them within the door. We seized the two, and
immediately tied them, when the third, stepping back and crying
out, my Scots merchant went in after them, and taking out a
composition we had made that would only smoke and stink, he set
fire to it, and threw it in among them. By that time the other
Scotsman and my man, taking charge of the two men already bound,
and tied together also by the arm, led them away to the idol, and
left them there, to see if their idol would relieve them, making
haste back to us.
When the fuze we had thrown in had filled the hut with so much
smoke that they were almost suffocated, we threw in a small leather
bag of another kind, which flamed like a candle, and, following it
in, we found there were but four people, who, as we supposed, had
been about some of their diabolical sacrifices. They appeared, in
short, frightened to death, at least so as to sit trembling and
stupid, and not able to speak either, for the smoke.
We quickly took them from the hut, where the smoke soon drove us
out, bound them as we had done the other, and all without any
noise. Then we carried them all together to the idol; when we came
there, we fell to work with him. First, we daubed him all over,
and his robes also, with tar, and tallow mixed with brimstone; then
we stopped his eyes and ears and mouth full of gunpowder, and
wrapped up a great piece of wildfire in his bonnet; then sticking
all the combustibles we had brought with us upon him, we looked
about to see if we could find anything else to help to burn him;
when my Scotsman remembered that by the hut, where the men were,
there lay a heap of dry forage; away he and the other Scotsman ran
and fetched their arms full of that. When we had done this, we
took all our prisoners, and brought them, having untied their feet
and ungagged their mouths, and made them stand up, and set them
before their monstrous idol, and then set fire to the whole.
We stayed by it a quarter of an hour or thereabouts, till the
powder in the eyes and mouth and ears of the idol blew up, and, as
we could perceive, had split altogether; and in a word, till we saw
it burned so that it would soon be quite consumed. We then began
to think of going away; but the Scotsman said, "No, we must not go,
for these poor deluded wretches will all throw themselves into the
fire, and burn themselves with the idol." So we resolved to stay
till the forage has burned down too, and then came away and left
them. 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 suppose that we had been anywhere
but in our beds.
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 Nertsinkay were at first in a great consternation,
for they said the Tartars were already no less than thirty thousand
strong. The Russian governor sent out messengers to appease them,
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
anybody 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, unwilling to make a breach, or to have any cause of
war alleged to be given by him, the Czar having strictly charged
him to treat the conquered country with gentleness, gave them 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 meantime, 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 anything of the matter; and as
for us that were guilty, we were 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 Muscovite colony, 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, it was plain we were
pursued. We had entered a vast desert, and had passed by a great
lake called Schanks Oser, when we perceived a large 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 Udda, a very great river when it passes farther north,
but when 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 dusk. We
had, to our great satisfaction, just pitched upon a convenient
place for our camp; for as we had just entered upon a desert above
five hundred miles over, where 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 camp that night, expecting to be
attacked before morning. 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 a most advantageous camp: for as we lay between two woods,
with a little rivulet running just before our front, 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 the 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. They did not come on 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
idol, that they might burn them with fire; and upon this, they
said, they would go away, and do us no further 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 peaceful merchants,
travelling on our business; that we had done no harm to them or to
any one else; and that, therefore, they must look further for the
enemies who had injured them, for we were not the people; so they
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 so well posted, they durst come no
farther than the brook in our front, where they stood in such
number as to terrify us very much; indeed, some spoke of ten
thousand. Here they stood and looked at us a while, and then,
setting up a great howl, let fly a crowd of arrows among us; but we
were well enough 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, calling to the leader of the caravan, said to him, "I
will send all these people away to Sibeilka." 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 burned the Cham Chi-Thaungu were gone
to Sibeilka, with a caravan of miscreants, as he called them--that
is to say, Christians; and that they had resolved to burn the god
Scal-Isar, belonging to the Tonguses. As this fellow was himself a
Tartar, and perfectly spoke their language, he counterfeited so
well that they all believed him, and away they drove in a violent
hurry to Sibeilka. In less than three hours they were entirely out
of our sight, and we never heard any more of them, nor whether they
went to Sibeilka or no. So we passed away safely on to Jarawena,
where there was a Russian garrison, and there we rested five days.
From this city we had a frightful desert, which held us twenty-
three days' march. We furnished ourselves with some tents here,
for the better accommodating ourselves in the night; and the leader
of the caravan procured sixteen waggons of the country, for
carrying our water or provisions, and these carriages were our
defence every night round our little camp; so that had the Tartars
appeared, unless they had been very numerous indeed, they would not
have been able to hurt us. We may well be supposed to have wanted
rest again after this long journey; for in this desert we neither
saw house nor tree, and scarce a bush; though we saw abundance of
the sable-hunters, who are all Tartars of Mogul Tartary; of which
this country is a part; and they frequently attack small caravans,
but we saw no numbers of them together.
After we had passed this desert we came into a country pretty well
inhabited--that is to say, we found towns and castles, settled by
the Czar with garrisons of stationary soldiers, to protect the
caravans and defend the country against the Tartars, who would
otherwise make it very dangerous travelling; and his czarish
majesty has given such strict orders for the well guarding the
caravans, that, if there are any Tartars heard of in the country,
detachments of the garrison are always sent to see the travellers
safe from station to station. Thus the governor of Adinskoy, whom
I had an opportunity to make a visit 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, to the next station.
I thought, long before this, that as we came nearer to Europe we
should find the country better inhabited, and the people more
civilised; but I found myself mistaken in both: for we had yet the
nation of the Tonguses to pass through, where we saw the same
tokens of paganism and barbarity as before; only, as they were
conquered by the Muscovites, they were not so dangerous, but for
rudeness of manners and idolatry no people in the world ever went
/>
beyond them. They are all clothed in skins of beasts, and their
houses are built of the same; you know not a man from a woman,
neither by the ruggedness of their countenances nor their clothes;
and in the winter, when the ground is covered with snow, they live
underground in vaults, which have cavities going from one to
another. If the Tartars had their Cham Chi-Thaungu for a whole
village or country, these had idols in every hut and every cave.
This country, I reckon, was, from the desert I spoke of last, at
least four hundred miles, half of it being another desert, which
took us up twelve days' severe travelling, without house or tree;
and we were obliged again to carry our own provisions, as well
water as bread. After we were out of this desert and had travelled
two days, we came to Janezay, a Muscovite city or station, on the
great river Janezay, which, they told us there, parted Europe from
Asia.
All the country between the river Oby and the river Janezay is as
entirely pagan, and the people as barbarous, as the remotest of the
Tartars. I also found, which I observed to the Muscovite governors
whom I had an opportunity to converse with, that the poor pagans
are not much wiser, or nearer Christianity, for being under the
Muscovite government, which they acknowledged was true enough--but
that, as they said, was none of their business; that if the Czar
expected to convert his Siberian, Tonguse, or Tartar subjects, it
should be done by sending clergymen among them, not soldiers; and
they added, with more sincerity than I expected, that it was not so
much the concern of their monarch to make the people Christians as
to make them subjects.
From this river to the Oby we crossed a wild uncultivated country,
barren of people and good management, otherwise it is in itself a
pleasant, fruitful, and agreeable country. What inhabitants we
found in it are all pagans, except such as are sent among them from
Russia; for this is the country--I mean on both sides the river
Oby--whither the Muscovite criminals that are not put to death are
banished, and from whence it is next to impossible they should ever
get away. I have nothing material to say of my particular affairs
till I came to Tobolski, the capital city of Siberia, where I
continued some time on the following account.
We had now been almost seven months on our journey, and winter
began to come on apace; whereupon my partner and I called a council
about our particular affairs, in which we found it proper, as we
were bound for England, to consider how to dispose of ourselves.
They told us of sledges and reindeer to carry us over the snow in
the winter time, by which means, indeed, the Russians travel more
in winter than they can in summer, as in these sledges they are
able to run night and day: the snow, being frozen, is one
universal covering to nature, by which the hills, vales, rivers,
and lakes are all smooth and hard is a stone, and they run upon the
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
