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,