We may well be supposed to want rest again after this long journey; for in this desert we saw neither house or tree, or scarce a bush:  we saw, indeed, abundance of the sable-hunters, as they called them.  These are all Tartars of the Mogul Tartary, of which this country is a part; and they frequently attack small caravans; but we saw no numbers of them together.  I was curious to see the sable skins they catched; but I could never speak with any of them; for they durst not come near us; neither durst we straggle from our company to go near them.

After we had passed this desert, we came into a country pretty well inhabited; that is to say, we found towns and castles settled by the czar of Muscovy, with garrisons of stationary soldiers to protect the caravans, and defend the country against the Tartars, who would otherwise make it very dangerous travelling; and his czarish majesty has given such strict orders for the well guarding the caravans and merchants, that if there are any Tartars heard of in the country, detachments of the garrison are always sent to see travellers safe from station to station.

And thus the governor of Adinskoy, whom I had an opportunity to make a visit to, by means of the Scots merchant, who was acquainted with him, offered us a guard of fifty men, if we thought there was any danger, to the next station.

I thought long before this, that as we came nearer to Europe we should find the country better peopled, and the people more civilized; but I found myself mistaken in both, for we had yet the nation of the Tonguses to pass through; where we saw the same tokens of paganism and barbarity, or worse, than before; only as they were conquered by the Muscovites, and entirely reduced, they were not so dangerous; but for the rudeness of manners, idolatry, and polytheism, no people in the world ever went beyond them.  They are clothed all in skins of beasts, and their houses are built of the same.  You know not a man from a woman, neither by the ruggedness of their countenances, or their clothes; and in the winter, when the ground is covered with snow, they live under ground, in houses like vaults, which have cavities or caves going from one to another.

If the Tartars had their Cham-Chi-Thaungu for a whole village, or country, these had idols in every hut and every cave; besides, they worship the stars, the sun, the water, the snow; and, in a word, every thing that they do not understand, and they understand but very little; so that almost every element, every uncommon thing, sets them a-sacrificing.

But I am no more to describe people than countries, any farther than my own story comes to be concerned in them.  I met with nothing peculiar to myself in all this country, which I reckon was, from the desert which I spoke of last, at least four hundred miles, half of it being another desert, which took us up twelve days severe travelling, without house, tree, or bush; but we were obliged again to carry our own