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.

Some instances of this we met with in the country between Arguna, where
we enter the Muscovite dominions, and a city of Tartars and Russians
together, called Nortziousky, in which is a continued desert or forest,
which cost us twenty days to travel over. In a 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 sacrifice
that day; for there stood out, upon an old stump of a tree, a diabolical
kind of idol made of wood; it was dressed up, too, in the most filthy
manner; its upper garment was of sheepskins, 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 scarecrow was set up at the outer side of the village; and when I
came near to it there were sixteen or seventeen creatures all lying flat
upon the ground round this hideous block of wood; I saw no motion among
them, any more than if they had been all logs, like the idol, and at
first I really thought they had been so; but, when I came a little
nearer, they started up upon their feet, and raised a howl, as if it had
been so many deep-mouthed hounds, and walked away, as if they were
displeased at our disturbing them. A little way off from the idol, and
at the door of a hut, made of sheep and cow skins dried, stood three men
with long knives in their hands; and in the middle of the tent appeared
three sheep killed, and one young bullock. These, it seems, were
sacrifices to that senseless log of an idol; the three men were priests
belonging to it, and the seventeen prostrated wretches were the people
who brought the offering, and were offering their prayers to that stock.

I confess I was more moved at their stupidity and brutish worship of a
hobgoblin than ever I was at anything in my life, and, overcome with
rage, I rode up to the hideous idol, and with my sword made a stroke at
the bonnet that was on its head, and cut it in two; and one of our men
that was with me, taking hold of the sheepskin that covered it, pulled at
it, when, behold, a most hideous outcry ran through the village, and two
or three hundred people came about my ears, so that I was glad to scour
for it, for some had