CHAP. XII.
How Captain Smith was sent Prisoner thorow the Black and Dissabacca Sea in
Tartaria; the Description of those seas, and his usage.
This Noble Gentlewoman took sometime occasion to shew him to some Friends, or rather to speak with him, because she could speak Italian, would feign her self sick when she should go to the Bannians, or weep over the Graves, to know how Bogal took him Prisoner; and if he were as the Bashaw writ to her, a Bohemian Lord conquered by his Hand, as he had many others, which ere long he would present her, whose Ransomes should adorn her with the glory of his Conquests.
But when she heard him protest he knew no such matter, nor ever saw Bogal, till he bought him at Axopolis, and that he was an English-man, only by his Adventures made a Captain in those Countries. To try the truth, she found means to find out many who could speak English, French, Dutch, and Italian, to whom relating most part of these former Passages she thought necessary, which they so honestly reported to her, she took (as it seemed) much compassion on him; but having no use for him, lest her Mother should sell him, she sent him to her Brother, the Timor Bashaw of Nalbrits, In the Country of Cambia, a Province in Tartaria.
{MN-1} Here now let us remember his passing, in this speculative course from Constantinople by Sander, Screw, Panassa, Musa, Lastilla, to Varna, an ancient City upon the Black Sea. In all which Journey, having little more liberty, than his eyes judgment, since his Captivity, he might see the Towns with their short Towers, and a most plain, fertile, and delicate Country, especially that most admired place of Greece, now called Romania, but from Varna, nothing but the Black Sea Water, till he came to the two Capes of Taur and Pergilos, where he passed the Streight of Niger, which (as he conjectured) is some ten Leagues long, and three broad, betwixt two Low-lands, the Channel is deep, {MN-2} but at the entrance of the Sea Dissabacca, there are many great Osie-shaulds, and many great black Rocks, which the Turks said were Trees, Weeds, and Mud, thrown from the In-land Countries, by the Inundations and violence of the Current, and cast there by the Eddy. They Sailed by many low Isles, and saw many more of those muddy Rocks, and nothing else, but salt Water, till they came betwixt Sufax and Curuske, only two white Towns at the entrance of the River Bruapo appeared: In six or seven days Sail, he saw four or five seeming strong Castles of Stone, with flat tops and Battlements about them, but arriving at Cambia, he was (according to their custom) well used. The River was there more than half a Mile broad. The Castle was of a large Circumference, fourteen or fifteen foot thick, in the Foundation some six foot from the Wall, is a Pallizado, and then a Ditch of about forty foot broad full of Water. On the West side of it, is a Town, all of low flat Houses, which as he conceived, could be of no great strength, yet it keeps all them barbarous Countreys about it in admiration and subjection. After he had stayed there three days; it was two days more before his Guides brought him to Nalbrits, where the Tymor was then resident, in a great vast Stone Castle, with many great Courts about it, invironed with high Stone Walls, where was quartered their Arms, when they first subjected those Countries, which only live to labour for those Tyrannical Turks.
{MN-1} How he was sent into Tartaria.
{MN-2} The Description of the Dissabacca Sea.
{MN} To her unkind Brother, this kind Lady writ so much for his good usage, that he half expected, as much as she intended; for she told him, he should there but sojourn to learn the Language, and what it was to be a Turk, till time made her Master of her self. But the Tymor, her Brother, diverted all this to the worst of Cruelty; for within an hour after his arrival, he caused his Drubman to strip him naked, and shave his Head and Beard so bare as his Hand, a great Ring of Iron, with a long stalk bowed like a Sickle, revitted about his Neck, and a Coat made of Ulgries Hair, guarded about with a piece of an undrest Skin. There were many more Christian Slaves, and near an hundred Forsados of Turks and Moors, and he being the last, was slave of Slaves to them all. Among these slavish Fortunes, there was no great choice; for the best was so bad, a Dog could hardly have lived to endure, and yet for all their pains and labours, no more regarded than a Beast.