a Russian garrison, and there we rested five days.

From this city we had a frightful desert, which held us twenty-three
days' march. We furnished ourselves with some tents here, for the better
accommodating ourselves in the night; and the leader of the caravan
procured sixteen waggons of the country, for carrying our water or
provisions, and these carriages were our defence every night round our
little camp; so that had the Tartars appeared, unless they had been very
numerous indeed, they would not have been able to hurt us. We may well
be supposed to have wanted rest again after this long journey; for in
this desert we neither saw house nor tree, and scarce a bush; though we
saw abundance of the sable-hunters, who are all Tartars of Mogul Tartary;
of which this country is a part; and they frequently attack small
caravans, but we saw no numbers of them together.

After we had passed this desert we came into a country pretty well
inhabited--that is to say, we found towns and castles, settled by the
Czar with garrisons of stationary soldiers, to protect the caravans and
defend the country against the Tartars, who would otherwise make it very
dangerous travelling; and his czarish majesty has given such strict
orders for the well guarding the caravans, that, if there are any Tartars
heard of in the country, detachments of the garrison are always sent to
see the travellers safe from station to station. Thus the governor of
Adinskoy, whom I had an opportunity to make a visit to, by means of the
Scots merchant, who was acquainted with him, offered us a guard of fifty
men, if we thought there was any danger, to the next station.

I thought, long before this, that as we came nearer to Europe we should
find the country better inhabited, and the people more civilised; but I
found myself mistaken in both: for we had yet the nation of the Tonguses
to pass through, where we saw the same tokens of paganism and barbarity
as before; only, as they were conquered by the Muscovites, they were not
so dangerous, but for rudeness of manners and idolatry no people in the
world ever went beyond them. They are all clothed in skins of beasts,
and their houses are built of the same; you know not a man from a woman,
neither by the ruggedness of their countenances nor their clothes; and in
the winter, when the ground is covered with snow, they live underground
in vaults, which have cavities going from one to another. If the Tartars
had their