men, and cunning craftiness whereby they lie in wait to deceive." Every member of the church, at least of any breeding or capacity, so well ought to be grounded in spiritual knowledge, as, if need be, to examine their teachers themselves, Acts xvii. 11: "They searched the Scriptures daily, whether those things were so." Rev. ii. 2: "Thou hast tried them which say they are apostles, and are not." How should any private Christian try his teachers, unless he be well grounded himself in the rule of Scripture, by which he is taught. As therefore among papists, their ignorance in Scripture chiefly upholds popery; so among protestant people, the frequent and serious reading thereof will soonest pull popery down. Another means to abate popery arises from the constant reading of Scripture, wherein believers, who agree in the main, are every where exhorted to mutual forbearance and charity one towards the other, though dissenting in some opinions. It is written, that the coat of our Saviour was without seam; whence some would infer, that there should be no division in the church of Christ. It should be so indeed; yet seams in the same cloth neither hurt the garment, nor misbecome it; and not only seams, but schisms will be while men are fallible: but if they who dissent in matters not essential to belief, while the common adversary is in the field, shall stand jarring and pelting at one another, they will be soon routed and subdued. The papist with open mouth makes much advantage of our several opinions; not that he is able to confute the worst of them, but that we by our continual jangle among ourselves make them worse than they are indeed. To save ourselves therefore, and resist the common enemy, it concerns us mainly to agree within ourselves, that with joint forces we may not only hold our own, but get ground: and why should we not? The gospel commands us to tolerate one another, though of various opinions, and hath promised a good and happy event thereof; Phil. iii. 15: "Let us, therefore, as many as be perfect, be thus minded; and if in any thing ye be otherwise minded, God shall reveal even this unto you.' And we are bid, 1 Thess. v. 21; "Prove all things, hold fast that which is good." St. Paul judged, that not only to tolerate, but to examine and prove all things, was no danger to our holding fast that which is good. How shall we prove things, which includes all opinions at least founded on Scripture, unless we not only tolerate them, but patiently hear them, and seriously read them? If he who thinks himself in the truth professes to have learnt it, not by implicit faith, but by attentive study of the Scriptures, and full persuasion of heart; with what equity can he refuse to hear or read him, who demonstrates to have gained his knowledge by the same way? Is it a fair course to assert truth, by arrogating to himself the only freedom of speech, and stopping the mouths of others equally gifted? This is the direct way to bring in that papistical implicit faith, which we all disclaim. They pretend it would unsettle the weaker sort; the same groundless fear is pretended by the Romish clergy. At least then let them have leave to write in Latin, which the common people understand not; that what they hold may be discussed among the learned only. We suffer the idolatrous books of papists, without this fear, to be sold and read as common as our own: why not much rather of anabaptists, Arians, Arminians, and Socinians? There is no learned man but will confess he hath much profited by reading controver sies, his senses awakened, his judgment sharpened, and the truth which he holds more firmly established. If then it be profitable for him to read, why should it not at least be tolerable and free for his adversary to write? In logic they teach, that contraries laid together more evidently appear: it follows then, that all controversy being permitted, falsehood will appear more all false, and truth the more true; which must needs conduce much, not only to the confounding of popery, but to the general confirmation of unimplicit truth. The last means to avoid popery is, to amend our lives: it is a general complaint, that this nation of late years is grown more numerously and excessively vicious than heretofore; pride, luxury, drunkenness, whoredom, cursing, swearing, bold and open atheism every where abounding: where these grow, no wonder if popery also grow apace. There is no man so wicked, but at some times his conscience will wring him with thoughts of another world, and the peril of his soul; the trouble and melancholy, which he conceives of true repentance and amendment, he endures not, but inclines rather to some carnal superstition, which may pacify and lull his conscience with some more pleasing doctrine. None more ready and officious to offer herself than the Romish, and opens wide her office, with all her faculties, to receive him; easy confession, easy absolution, pardons, indulgences, masses for him both quick and dead, Agnus Dei's, relics, and the like: and he, instead of "working out his salvation with fear and trembling," straight thinks in his heart, (like another kind of fool than he in the Psalms,) to bribe God as a corrupt judge; and by his proctor, some priest, or friar, to buy out his peace with money, which he cannot with his repentance. For God, when men sin outrageously, and will not be admonished, gives over chastising them, perhaps by pestilence, fire, sword, or famine, which may all turn to their good, and takes up his severest punishments, hardness, besottedness of heart, and idolatry, to their final perdition. Idolatry brought the heathen to heinous transgressions, Rom. ii. And heinous transgressions ofttimes bring the slight professors of true religion to gross idolatry: 1 Thess. ii. 11, 12: "For this cause God shall send them strong delusion, that they should believe a lie, that they all might be damned who believe not the truth, but had pleasure in unrighteousness." And Isaiah xliv. 18, speaking of idolaters, "They have not known nor understood, for he hath shut their eyes that they cannot see, and their hearts that they cannot understand." Let us, therefore, using this last means, last here spoken of, but first to be done, amend our lives with all speed; lest through impenitency we run into that stupidity which we now seek all means so warily to avoid, the worst of superstitions, and the heaviest of all God's judgments, popery." 2 E A BRIEF HISTORY OF MOSCOVIA, AND OF OTHER LESS KNOWN COUNTRIES LYING EASTWARD OF RUSSIA AS FAR AS CATHAY. GATHERED FROM THE WRITINGS OF SEVERAL EYE-WITNESSES. [FIRST PUBLISHED 1682.] THE PREFACE. THE study of geography is both profitable and delightful: but the writers thereof, though some of them exact enough in setting down longitudes and latitudes, yet in those other relations of manners, religion, government, and such like, accounted geographical, have for the most part missed their proportions. Some too brief and deficient satisfy not; others too voluminous and impertinent cloy and weary out the reader, while they tell long stories of absurd superstitions, ceremonies, quaint habits, and other petty circumstances little to the purpose. Whereby that which is useful, and only worth observation, in such a wood of words, is either overslipped, or soon forgotten; which perhaps brought into the mind of some men more learned and judicious, who had not the leisure or purpose to write an entire geography, yet at least to assay something in the description of one or two countries, which might be as a pattern or example to render others more cautious hereafter, who intended the whole work. And this perhaps induced Paulus Jovius to describe only Moscovy and Britain. Some such thoughts, many years since, led me at a vacant time to attempt the like argument, and I began with Moscovy, as being the most northern region of Europe reputed civil; and the more northern parts thereof first discovered by English voyagers. Wherein I saw I had by much the advantage of Jovius. What was scattered in many volumes, and observed at several times by eye-witnesses, with no cursory pains I laid together, to save the reader a far longer travail of wandering through so many desert authors; who yet with some delight drew me after them, from the eastern bounds of Russia, to the walls of Cathay, in several late journies made thither over land by Russians, who describe the countries in their way far otherwise than our common geographers. From proceeding further, other occasions diverted me. This Essay, such as it is, was thought by some, who knew of it, not amiss to be published; that so many things remarkable, dispersed before, now brought under one view, might not hazard to be otherwise lost, nor the labour lost of collecting them. 350 MOSCOVIA: OR, RELATIONS OF MOSCOVIA, AS FAR AS HATH BEEN DISCOVERED BY ENGLISH VOYAGES; GATHERED FROM THE WRITINGS OF SEVERAL EYE-WITNESSES: AND THE OTHER LESS KNOWN COUNTRIES LYING EASTWARD OF RUSSIA AS FAR AS CATHAY, LATELY DISCOVERED AT SEVERAL TIMES BY THE RUSSIANS. CHAPTER I. A brief description. THE empire of Moscovia, or as others call it Russia, is bounded on the north with Lapland and the ocean; southward by the Crim Tartar; on the west by Lithuania, Livonia, and Poland; on the east by the river Ob, or Oby, and the Nagayan Tartars on the Volga as fas as Astracan. The north parts of this country are so barren, that the inhabitants fetch their corn a thousand miles;* and so cold in winter, that the very sap of their woodfuel burning on the fire, freezes at the brand's end, where it drops. The mariners, which were left on shipboard in the first English Voyage thither, in going up only from the cabins to the hatches,† had their breath so congealed by the cold, that they fell down as it were stifled. The bay of St. Nicholas, where they first put in, lieth in sixty-four degrees; called so from the abbey there built of wood, wherein are twenty monks, unlearned, as then they found them, and great drunkards: their church is fair, full of images and tapers. There are besides but six houses, whereof one built by the English. In the bay over against the abbey is Rose Island,§ full of damask and red roses, violets, and wild rosemary; the isle is in circuit seven or eight miles; about the midst of May, the snow there is cleared, having two months been melting; then the ground in fourteen days is dry, and grass knee-deep within a month; after September frost returns, and snow a yard high: it hath a house built by the English near to a fresh fair spring. North-east of the abbey, on the other side of Duina, is the castle of Archangel, where the English have another house. The river Duina, beginning about seven hundred miles within the country, having first received Pinega, falls here into the sea, very large and swift, but shallow. It runneth pleasantly between hills on either side; beset like a wilderness with high fir and other trees. Their boats of timber, without any iron in them, are either to sail, or to be drawn up with ropes against the stream. North-east beyond Archangel standeth Lampas,|| where twice a year is kept a great fair of Russes, Tartars, and Samoeds; and to the landward Mezen, and Slobotca, two towns of traffic between the river Pechora, or • Hack. 251. † Ibid. vol. i. 248. Ibid. 376. § Ibid. 365. | Ibid. 284. Petzora, and Duina: to seaward lies the cape of Candinos, and the island of Colgoieve, about thirty leagues from the bar of Pechory in sixty-nine degrees. The river Pechora or Petzora, holding his course through Siberia, how far the Russians thereabouts know not, runneth into the sea at seventy-two mouths, full of ice; abounding with swans, ducks, geese, and partridge, which they take in July, sell the feathers, and salt the bodies for winter provision. On this river spreading to a lake, stands the town of Pustozera in sixty-eight degrees,† having some eighty or a hundred houses, where certain merchants of Hull wintered in the year sixteen hundred and eleven. The town Pechora, small and poor, hath three churches. They traded there up the river four days' journey to Oustzilma a small town of sixty houses. The Russians that have travelled say, that this river springs out of the mountains of Jougoria, and runs through Permia. Not far from the mouth thereof are the straits of Vaigats, of which hereafter: more eastward is the point of Naramzy, the next to that the river Ob;‡ beyond which the Moscovites have extended lately their dominion. Touching the Riphæan mountains, whence Tanais was anciently thought to spring, our men could hear nothing; but rather that the whole country is champaign, and in the northermost part huge and desert woods of fir, abounding with black wolves, bears, buffs, and another beast called rossomakka, whose female bringeth forth by passing through some narrow place, as between two stakes, and so presseth her womb to a disburdening. Travelling southward they found the country more pleasant, fair, and better inhabited, corn, pasture, meadows, and huge woods. Arkania (if it be not the same with Archangel) is a place of English trade, from whence a day's journey distant, but from St. Nicholas a hundred versts, § Colmogro stands on the Duina; a great town not walled, but scattered. The Eng lish have here lands of their own, given them by the emperor, and fair houses: not far beyond, Pinega, running between rocks of alabaster and great woods, meets with Duina. From Colmogro to Usting are five hun dred versts or little miles, an ancient city upon the confluence of Juga and Sucana into Duina,|| which there first receives his name. Thence continuing by water to Wologda, a great city so named of the river which passes through the midst; it hath a castle walled about with brick and stone, and many wooden churches, two for every parish, the one in winter to be heated, the other used in summer; this is a town of much traffic, a thousand miles from St. Nicholas. All this way by water no lodging is to be had but under open sky by the river side, and other provision only what they bring with them. From Wologda by sled they go to Yeraslave on the Volga, whose breadth is there at least a mile over, and thence runs two thousand seven hundred versts to the Caspian sea, having his head spring out of Bealozera, which is a lake, amidst whereof is built a strong tower, wherein the kings of Moscovy reserve their treasure in time of war. From this town to Rostove, then to Pereslave, a great town situate on a fair lake, thence to Mosco. Between Yeraslave and Mosco, which is two hundred miles, the country is so fertile, so populous and full of villages, that in a forenoon seven or eight hundred sleds are usually seen coming with salt-fish, or laden back with corn. ** Mosco the chief city, lying in fifty-five degrees, distant from St. Nicholas *Purc. part 3. 533. Il Ibid. 312. + Ibid. Purc. ¶ lbid. 377, 248. Purc. 549, 445, 551. ** Ibid. 251. 335. § Hack. 376. |