596 THE GREAT RIVER YAMOUR.

“ Well,” says I, “but still it is better than paganism and wor-
shipping of devils.” ‘“ Why, I'll tell you,” says he; “ except the
Russian soldiers in garrisons, and a few of the inhabitants of the
cities upon the road, all the rest of this country, for above a thou-
sand miles further, is inhabited by the worst and most ignorant of
pagans.” And so, indeed, we found it.

We were now launched into the greatest piece of solid earth, if
I understand anything of the surface of the globe, that is to be
found in any part of the earth: we had at least twelve hundred
miles to the sea, eastward; we had at least two thousand to the
bottom of the Baltic Sea, westward; and above three thousand
miles, if we left that sea and went on west to the British and
French Channels; we had full five thousand miles to the Indian,
or Persian Sea, south; and about eight hundred miles to the Frozen
Sea, north; nay, if some people may be believed, there might be
no sea north-east till we came round the Pole, and consequently
into the north-west, and so had a continent of land into America,
the Lord knows where; though I could give some reasons why I
believe that to be a mistake.

As we entered into the Muscovite dominions, a good while before
we come to any considerable towns, we had nothing to observe there
but this: first, that all the rivers that run to the east, as I under-
stood by the charts which some in our caravan had with them, it
was plain, all those rivers ran into the great river Yamour, or Gam-
mour. ‘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, namely, three feet about, and twenty or thirty feet high,
I must be allowed to say I believe nothing of; but as its naviga-
tion 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 of, has been curious enough either to go down to
the mouth of it in boats, or come up from the mouth of it in ships;
but this is certain, that this river running due east, in the latitude
of about fifty 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.