TRAVELLING IN MUSCOVY. 597

Some leagues to, the north of this river there are several consider-
able 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
Mongul 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, make 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 Hastern 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 journeys, 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 particularly were placed in
Britain for the security of commerce, and for the lodging travellers;
and thus it was here; for wherever we came, though at these towns
and stations the garrisons and governor were Russians and pro-
fessed Christians, yet the inhabitants of the country were 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.

Some instances of this we met with in the country between
Arguna, where we enter the Muscovite dominions, and a city of
Tartars and Russians together, called Norstinskoy; in which is a
continued desert or forest, which cost us twenty days to travel over
it. In a village near the last of those places, I had the curiosity
to.go and see their way of living, which is most brutish and un-
sufferable. They had, I suppose, a great sacrifice that day; for