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.