446 ROBINSON CRUSOE. communication between the northern and 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 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 it is possible to place them, where his sol- diers keep garrison, something like the stationary soldiers placed by the Romans in the remotest countries of their empire ; some of which I had read of were placed in Britain, for the securit of commerce, and for the lodging of travellers: and thus it was here; for wherever we came, though at these towns and stations the garrisons and governors were Russians, and pro- fessed Christians, yet the inhabitants were mere pagans, sacrifi- cing 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 men’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 ‘l'artars and Russians together, called Nortziousky, in which is a continued desert or forest, which cost us twenty days to travel over. Ina village near the last of these places, I had the curiosity to go and see their way of living, which is most brutish and unsufferable. They had, I suppose, a great sacri- fice that day ; for there stood out, upon an old stump of a tree, an idol made of wood, frightful as the devil; at least, as any- thing we can think of to represent the devil can be made: + had a head not resembling any creature that the world ever saw ; ears as big as goats’ horns, ana as high; eyes as big as a crown-piece ; a nose like a crooked ram’s horn, and a mouth extended four-cornered, like that of a lion, with horrible teeth, hooked like a parrot’s under bill; it was dressed up in the filthiest manner that you could suppose ; its upper garment was of sheep-skins, with the wool outward ; a great Tartar bonnet on the head, with two horns growing through it ; it was about eight feet high, yet had no feet or legs, nor any other proportion of parts. This scarecow was set up at the outer side of the village ; and, when I came near to it, there were sixteen or seventeen creatures—whether men or women I could not tell, for they made no distinction by their habits—all lying flat upon the ground round this formidable block of shapeless wood ; I saw