latitudes.

The captain has since often expressed a dissatisfaction that he had
no share in the honours of that day, which he emphatically called
_bear-skin day_. He has also been very desirous of knowing by what art
I destroyed so many thousands, without fatigue or danger to myself;
indeed, he is so ambitious of dividing the glory with me, that we have
actually quarrelled about it, and we are not now upon speaking terms.
He boldly asserts I had no merit in deceiving the bears, because I was
covered with one of their skins; nay, he declares there is not, in his
opinion, in Europe, so complete a bear naturally as himself among the
human species.

He is now a noble peer, and I am too well acquainted with good manners
to dispute so delicate a point with his lordship.

CHAPTER XIV

_Our Baron excels Baron Tott beyond all comparison, yet fails in part of
his attempt--Gets into disgrace with the Grand Seignior, who orders his
head to be cut off--Escapes, and gets on board a vessel, in which he is
carried to Venice--Baron Tott's origin, with some account of that
great man's parents--Pope Ganganelli's amour--His Holiness fond of
shell-fish._

Baron de Tott, in his Memoirs, makes as great a parade of a single
act as many travellers whose whole lives have been spent in seeing the
different parts of the globe; for my part, if I had been blown from
Europe to Asia from the mouth of a cannon, I should have boasted less
of it afterwards than he has done of only firing off a Turkish piece of
ordnance. What he says of this wonderful gun, as near as my memory will
serve me, is this:--"The Turks had placed below the castle, and near the
city, on the banks of Simois, a celebrated river, an enormous piece
of ordnance cast in brass, which would carry a marble ball of eleven
hundred pounds weight. I was inclined," says Tott, "to fire it, but I
was willing first to judge of its effect; the crowd about me trembled at
this proposal, as they asserted it would overthrow not only the castle,
but the city also; at length their fears in part subsided, and I was
permitted to discharge it. It required not less than three hundred
and thirty pounds' weight of powder, and the ball weighed, as before
mentioned, eleven hundredweight. When the engineer brought the priming,
the crowds who were about me retreated back as fast as they could; nay,
it was with the utmost difficulty I persuaded the Pacha, who came on
purpose, there was no danger: even th