announces this extraordinary visit:

"The tzar of Muscovy, desiring to raise the glory of his nation, and
avenge the Christians of all the injuries they have received from the
Turks, has abrogated the wild manners of his predecessors, and having
concluded, from the behavior of his engineers and officers, who were
sent him by the Elector of Brandenburg, that the western nations of
Europe understood the art of war better than others, he resolved to
take a journey thither, and not wholly to rely upon the relations
which his embassadors might give him; and, at the same time, to send a
great number of his nobility into those parts through which he did not
intend to travel, that he might have a complete idea of the affairs of
Europe, and enrich his subjects with the arts of all other Christian
nations; and as navigation is the most useful invention that ever was
yet found out, he seems to have chosen it as his own part in the
general inquiry he is about. His design is certainly very noble, and
discovers the greatness of his genius. But the model he has proposed
himself to imitate is a convincing proof of his extraordinary
judgment; for what other prince, in the world, was a fitter pattern
for the great Emperor of Muscovy, than William the Third, King of
Great Britain?"[11]

[Footnote 11: Postman, No. 417.]

In London and Deptford Peter followed essentially the same mode of
life which he had adopted in Amsterdam. There was not a single article
belonging to a ship, from the casting of a cannon to the making of
cables, to which he did not devote special attention. He also devoted
some time to watch making. A number of English artificers, and also
several literary and scientific gentlemen from England, were taken
into his service. He made arrangements with a distinguished Scotch
geometrician and two mathematicians from Christ Church hospital, to
remove to Moscow, who laid the foundation in Russia of the Marine
Academy. To astronomy, the calculation of eclipses, and the laws of
gravitation he devoted much thought, guided by the most scientific men
England could then produce. Perry, an English engineer, was sent to
Russia to survey a route for a ship canal from the ocean to the
Caspian and from the Caspian to the Black Sea. A company of merchants
paid the tzar seventy-five thousand dollars for permission to import
tobacco into Russia. The sale of this narcotic had heretofore been
discouraged in Russia, by the church, as demorali