Norway was thus practically isolated from Europe. Sweden, however, during the Thirty Years' War, attracted some attention, partly on account of its share in the war, partly on account of the development of its silver mines. There is an interesting account of a visit to those at "Sylfbergen," twenty leagues from Stockholm, in 1667, which may serve as an indication of experiences that might have been met with at an earlier date. The visitor, a Frenchman,[57] descended, half-naked, in half a cask, which was attached to a cable by three iron chains, accompanied by two workers whose grimness, flavour, and unpleasant personalities, gave him an attack of nerves. Among the miners he found French, Germans, English, Italians and Russians, all, as he says, digging their own graves, for the conditions of mining in those days was terrible. A traveller through Hungary in 1615[58] notes that the miners there could not work more than four hours at a stretch, and that few reached middle age, what with the number of casualties and the conditions of the mines. One result of this was that they usually married at fifteen. Yet weekly wages, after making allowance for the cheapness of living in Hungary, were equivalent to no more than twelve to fourteen shillings at present values. It was a most natural question at the time to ask whether, working as they did in the bowels of the earth, they ever came across demons. To which question a miner answered that sometimes they did, and on those occasions they appeared in the shape of little black boys, chattering, but doing no harm beyond blowing the lamps out.
Returning northwards and continuing the journey to the other side of the Baltic, the dominions of the Grand Duke of Muscovy would not be reached immediately. Riga, the port most usually aimed at, belonged to Poland; the alternative harbour of Revel to Sweden. The choice of Riga is another instance of the contemporary preference for travelling by water rather than by land. However far out of the straight line between Danzig and Moscow, it was both the nearest coast town to the latter and also at the mouth of the river, the Dwina, which is navigable for the longest distance west of Moscow. One other route remains, discovered by the English, left wholly to them and to the Dutch, and only used by them because of commercial quarrels with the rulers of the Baltic. This was the sea-voyage of about two months from London to Archangel, then up the Dwina and Suchona to Vologda, and thence by land to Moscow.
DANGERS OF THE NORTHERN SEAS
Moscow then possessed about forty thousand houses. It may be doubted if any town in Europe surpassed that number. Yet it was not size that caused going to Muscovy to be practically identical with going to Moscow, but the fact that the latter was the residence of a ruler whose despotism was so unlimited that every other settlement became insignificant compared with that where he dwelt. This is typified by the prominence given by all foreigners to the banquet they generally attended as the guests of the Tsar, a display of barbaric magnificence that must evidently have been one of the most striking sights of Europe. Unfortunately the magnificence was apt to stop short at the door of the banquet-hall. One Italian[59] in particular could not forget leaving after three hours, picking his way through the outer rooms, pitch dark and strewn with courtiers in the weeping-stage of drunkenness, down the stairs. About twenty yards away from the foot of the stairs a crowd of servants were waiting with horses to take their masters home. Towards these they had to wade, knee-deep in mud, still in pitch-darkness, and so continue a good part of the way home, since no one was allowed to ride till he had passed out of the palace precincts.
Nowhere was this despotism more felt than in relation to travel: every foreigner was half a prisoner from the day he entered the kingdom to the day he left, even though he were an ambassador. The very Jesuits sent by the Pope, in 1581, at the Tsar's own request, to negotiate a peace between himself and the King of Poland were under surveillance to such an extent that they were not allowed to water their own horses. Neither was any subject allowed to leave the land: the penalty for unlicensed travel being death. It is clear that leave must have been more freely granted than one might imagine from the general statements of visitors, since Russian pilgrims and merchants are by no means uncommon, and indeed, at this period, Peter Mogila, Metropolitan of Kiev, and Boris Godunov, ruler at Moscow, endeavoured to encourage travel by Russians as a means of education.
Godunov's efforts, in fact, beginning as they did with his accession in 1586, synchronised with the growth of the same idea in England. But his efforts failed through being too far ahead of public opinion; those whom he sent stayed away permanently, those who stayed at home remained unconverted.[60] Two instances of public opinion as regards foreigners may be quoted, both occurring on the direct road to Moscow at the very end of this period, during the whole of which the number of visitors goes on increasing. The first is the experience of some Dutchmen who came by invitation of the Tsar and consequently had a house commandeered for them. The wife of the owner, seeing no help was to be had from the local authorities, rushed to St. Nicholas and would, she believed, have obtained a miraculous expulsion of the visitors had not her husband tired of the length of her prayer and stopped it by force. The second is that of a Danish gentleman who, with his companions, was prevented from entering a village by bees which the peasants had irritated for that purpose.
So, too, with the Muscovites and travel on their own account. Whereas other Europeans only thought of dying when they travelled, the Muscovite only thought of travelling when he died. Then his friends shod him with a new pair of shoes for the long journey that he had to go, and put a letter in his hand to St. Nicholas, by way of passport, testifying that the bearer died a Russian of the Russians in the one true faith.