We stayed by it a quarter of an hour, or thereabouts, til the powder in the eyes, and mouth, and ears of the idol blew up, and, as we could perceive, had split and deformed the shape of it; and, in a word, till we saw it burnt into a mere block or log of wood; and then igniting the dry forage to it, we found it would be soon quite consumed; so we 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 was burnt down too, and then we came away and left them.
In the morning we appeared among our fellow-travellers, exceeding 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 that day’s journey.
But it did not end so; for the next day came a great multitude of the country people, not only of this village, but of a hundred more, for aught I know, 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; such a hard name they gave the monstrous creature they worshipped. The people of Nertzinskay were at first in a great consternation; for they said the Tartars were no less than thirty thousand, and that in a few days more they would be one hundred thousand stronger.
The Russian governor sent out messengers to appease them, and gave them all the good words imaginable. He assured them he knew nothing of it, and that there had not a soul of his garrison been abroad; that it could not be from any body there; and if they would let him know who it was, he should be exemplarily punished. They returned haughtily, That all the country reverenced the great Cham-Chi-Thaungu, who dwelt in the son, and no mortal would have dared to offer violence to his image, but some Christian miscreant; so they called them, it seems; and they therefore denounced 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 straitly charged him 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 they 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 any thing of the matter; and, as for us that were guilty, we were the least of all suspected; none so much as asked us the question; however, the captain of the caravan, for the time, took the hint that the governor gave us, and we marched or 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 it is to be observed, that here we began, for two or three days march, to enter upon a vast nameless desert, of which I shall say more in its place; and which if we had now been upon it, it is more than probable we had been all destroyed. It was the second day’s march from Plothus that 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 the desert, and had passed by a great lake, called Schanks Osier, 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 should have taken that side of the lake, whereas we very happily took the south side: and in two days more we saw them not, for they, believing we were still before them, pushed on, till they came to the river Udda: this is 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 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 of Jarawena, which we had yet two days march to; the desert, however, had some few woods in it on this side, and little river, which ran all into the great river Udda. It was in a narrow strait, between two small but very thick woods, that we pitched our little camp for that night, expecting to be attacked in the night.
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 side of the river, and we felled 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 burnt their god Cham-Chi-Thaungu, 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 burn us all with fire. Our men looked very blank at this message, and began to stare at one another, to see who looked with most guilt in their faces, but, nobody was the word, nobody did it. The leader of the caravan sent word, he was well assured 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 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.