of all that occurred. He
was generally called by the name of Master Peter. While hard at work
in the ship-yard, he received intelligence of troubles in Poland. The
renowned king, John Sobieski, died in 1696. The electors were divided
in the choice of a successor. Augustus II., Elector of Saxony, by
means of bribes and his army, obtained the vote. But there was great
dissatisfaction, and a large party of the nation rallied around the
prince of Conti, the rival candidate. Peter, learning these facts,
immediately sent word, from his carpenter's shop, to Augustus,
offering to send an army of thirty thousand men to his assistance. He
frequently went from Zaandam to Amsterdam, to attend the anatomical
lectures of the celebrated Ruisch. His thirst for knowledge appeared
to be universal and insatiable. He even performed, himself, several
surgical operations. He also studied natural philosophy under Witsen.
Most minds would have been bewildered by such a multiplicity of
employments, but his mental organization was of that peculiar class
which grasps and retains all within its reach. He worked at the forge,
in the rope-walks, at the sawing mills, and in the manufactures for
wire drawing, making paper and extracting oil.

While at Zaandam, Peter finished a sixty gun ship, upon which he had
worked diligently from the laying of the keel. As the Russians then
had no harbor in the Baltic, this ship was sent to Archangel, on the
shores of the White Sea. Peter also engaged a large number of French
refugees, and Swiss and German artists, to enter his service and sent
them to Moscow. Whenever he found a mechanic whose work testified to
superior skill, he would secure him at almost any price and send him
to Moscow. To geography he devoted great attention, and even then
devised the plan of uniting the Caspian and the Black Sea by a ship
canal.

Early in January, 1698, Peter, having passed nine months at Zaandam,
left for the Hague. King William III. sent his yacht to the Hague, to
convey the tzar to England, with a convoy of two ships of war. Peter
left the Hague on the 18th of January, and arrived in London on the
21st. Though he attempted here no secrecy as to his rank, he
requested to be treated only as a private gentleman. A large mansion
was engaged for him, near the royal navy yard at Deptford, a small
town upon the Thames, about four miles from London. The London
Postman, one of the leading metropolitan journals of that day, thus