ions--Arrival at Konigsberg--Grand procession in entering the
city--The pages--Curiosity of the people--The escort--Crowds in the
streets--The embassy arrives at its lodgings--Audience of the
king--Presents--Delivery of the letter from the Czar--Its contents--The
king's reply--Grand banquet--Effects of such an embassy--The policy of
modern governments--The people now reserve their earnings for their own
use--How Peter occupied his time--Dantzic--Peter preserves his
incognito--Presents--His dress--His interest in the shipping--Grand
entrance into Holland--Curiosity of the people--Peter enters Amsterdam
privately--Views of the Hollanders--Residence of the Czar--The East India
Company--Peter goes to work--His real object in pursuing this course--His
taste for mechanics--The opportunities and facilities he enjoyed--His old
workshop--Mode of preserving it--The workmen in the yard--Peter's visits
to his friends in Amsterdam--The rich merchant--Peter's manners and
character--The Hague--The embassy at the Hague

At the time when the emperor issued his orders to so many of the sons of
the nobility, requiring them to go and reside for a time in the cities of
western Europe, he formed the design of going himself to make a tour in
that part of the world, for the purpose of visiting the courts and
capitals, and seeing with his own eyes what arts and improvements were to
be found there which might be advantageously introduced into his own
dominions. In the spring of the year 1697, he thought that the time had
come for carrying this idea into effect.

The plan which he formed was not to travel openly in his own name, for he
knew that in this case a great portion of his time and attention, in the
different courts and capitals, would be wasted in the grand parades,
processions, and ceremonies with which the different sovereigns would
doubtless endeavor to honor his visit. He therefore determined to travel
incognito, in the character of a private person in the train of an
embassy. An embassy could proceed more quietly from place to place than
a monarch traveling in his own name; and then besides, if the emperor
occupied only a subordinate place in the train of the embassy, he could
slip away from it to pursue his own inquiries in a private manner
whenever he pleased, leaving the embassadors themselves and those of
their train who enjoyed such scenes to go through all the public
receptions and other pompous formalities which would ha