We were now launched into the greatest piece of solid earth, if I understand any thing of the surface of the globe, that is to be found in any part of the world: we had at least twelve hundred miles to the sea, eastward; we had at least two thousand to the bottom of the Baltic sea, westward; and almost three thousand miles, if we left that sea, and went on west to the British and French channels; we had full five thousand miles to the Indian or Persian sea, south; and about eight hundred miles to the Frozen sea, north; nay, if some people may be believed, there might be no sea north-east till we came round the pole, and consequently into the north-west, and so had a continent of land into America, no mortal knows where; though I could give some reasons why I believe that to be a mistake too.
As we entered into the Muscovite dominions, a good while before we came to any considerable town, we had nothing to observe there but this: first, that all the rivers run to the east. As I understood by the charts which some of our caravans had with them, it was plain that all those rivers ran into the great river Yamour, or Gammour. This river, by the natural course of it, must run into the east sea, or Chinese ocean. The story they tell us, that the mouth of this river is choked up with bulrushes of a monstrous growth, viz. three feet about, and twenty or thirty feet high, I must be allowed to say I believe nothing of; but as its navigation is of no use, because there is no trade that way, the Tartars, to whom alone it belongs, dealing in nothing but cattle; so nobody that ever I heard or, has been curious enough either to go down to the mouth of it in boats, or to come up from the mouth of it in ships; but this is certain, that this river running due east, in the latitude of sixty degrees, carries a vast concourse of rivers along with it, and finds an ocean to empty itself in that latitude; so we are sure of sea there.
Some leagues to the north of this river there are several considerable rivers, whose streams run as due north as the Yamour runs east; and these are all found to join their waters with the great river Tartarus, named so from the northernmost nations of the Mogul Tartars, who, the Chinese say, were the first Tartars in the world; and who, as our geographers allege, are the Gog and Magog mentioned in sacred story.
These rivers running all northward, as well as all the other rivers I am yet to speak of, made it evident that the northern ocean bounds the land also on that side; so that it does not seem rational in the least to think that the land can extend itself to join with America on that side, or that there is not a communication between the northern and the eastern ocean; but of this I shall say no more; it was my observation at that time, and therefore I take notice of it in this place. We now advanced from the river Arguna by easy and moderate journies, and were very visibly obliged to the care the czar of Muscovy has taken to have cities and towns built in as many places as are possible to place them, where his soldiers keep garrison, something, like the stationary soldiers placed by the Romans in the remotest countries of their empire, some of which I had read were particularly placed in Britain for the security of commerce, and for the lodging of travellers; and thus it was here; though wherever we came at these towns and stations the garrisons and governor were Russians and professed mere pagans, sacrificing to idols, and worshipping the sun, moon, and stars, or all the host of heaven; and not only so, but were, of all the heathens and pagans that ever I met with, the most barbarous, except only that they did not eat man’s flesh, as our savages of America did.
Some instances of this we met with in the country between Arguna, where we enter the Muscovite dominions, and a city of Tartars and Russians together, called Nertzinskay; in which space is a continued desert or forest, which cost us twenty days to travel over it. In a village near the last of those places, I had the curiosity to go and see their way of living; which is most brutish and unsufferable: they had, I suppose, a great sacrifice that day; for there stood out upon an old stump of a tree, an idol made of wood, frightful as the devil; at least as any thing we can think of to represent the devil that can be made. It had a head certainly not so much as resembling any creature that the world ever saw; ears as big as goats’ horns, and as high; eyes as big as a crown-piece; and a nose like a crooked ram’s horn, and a mouth extended four-cornered, like that of a lion, with horrible teeth, hooked like a parrot’s under bill. It was dressed up in the filthiest manner that you can suppose; its upper garment was of sheep-skins, with the wool outward; a great Tartar bonnet on the head, with two horns growing through it: it was about eight feet high, yet had no feet or legs, or any other proportion of parts.
This scarecrow was set up at the outside of the village; and when I came near to it, there were sixteen or seventeen creatures, whether men or women I could not tell, for they make no distinction by their habits, either of body or head; these lay all flat on the ground, round this formidable block of shapeless wood. I saw no motion among them any more than if they had been logs of wood, like their idol; at first I really thought they had been so; but when I came a little nearer, they started up upon their feet, and raised a howling cry, as if it had been so many deep-mouthed hounds, and walked away as if they were displeased at our disturbing them. A little way off from this monster, and at the door of a tent or hut, made all of sheep-skins and cow-skins, dried, stood three butchers: I thought they were such; for 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; and these three men 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 this 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; I say, to see it sunk and degenerated to a degree so more than 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 his Maker the homage and adoration of his creatures, had deluded them into such gross, surfeiting, 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 cut the bonnet that was on its head in two in the middle, so that it hung down by one of the horns; 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 our long march over the last desert; so we had some leisure here to put my design in execution. I communicated my project to the Scots merchant, of Moscow, of whose courage I had had a sufficient testimony, as above. 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, I was resolved, if I could get but four or five men well armed to go with me, to go and destroy that vile, abominable idol; to 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.
He laughed at me: said 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 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 their idolatry.”—“Can we not,” said I, “do it in the night, and then leave them the reasons in writing, in their own language?”—“Writing!” said he; “why, there is not in five nations of them one man that knows any thing of a letter, or how to read a word in any language, or in their own.”—“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 if you do this, it is ten to one but they will come by thousands to the governor of Nertzinskay, and complain, 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.”