Biographical Memoir of Peter Simon Pallas. 2S3 



Count OrlofF, he sent it every year to Petersburg, where its vo- 

 lumes were successively published *. 



It may be conceived that, labouring in this hurried manner, 

 and destitute, in these solitudes, of books, and of every means of 

 comparison, he would necessarily be exposed to fall into some mis- 

 takes, would bring forward things already known, as if they were 

 new, and would repeat the same things several times. We must 

 (lUow, too, that he might have given more animation to his narra- 

 tive, and presented the interesting objects of which he treats in a 

 more prominent manner. His long and dry enumeration of mines 

 and forges, his repeated list of common plants which he gathered, 

 or of ordinary birds which he saw passing, do not form agreeable 

 reading. He does not transport his reader along with him ; he 

 does not place, as it were, before his eyes, by the power of his 

 style, as more happy travellers have done, the grand scenes of 

 nature, or the singular manners which he witnessed ; but it will 

 undoubtedly be allowed in excuse, that the circumstances under 

 which he wrote, were not of the most inspiring description. 



Winter<j of six months' duration, passed in huts, far from apy 

 thing connected with literature, with black bread and brandy 

 for his only restoratives ; a degree of cold so intense as to cause 

 mercury to freeze ; summers insupportable from their heat dur- 

 ing the few weeks which they lasted ; the greatest part of the 

 time of his journey employed in scaling rocks, fording marshes^ 

 in making his way through woods by felling trees; those my*i 

 riads of insects which fill the atmosphere of northern countries, 

 covering him every moment with blood; tribes of men im- 

 pressed with all the miseries of the country, disgustingly 

 slovenly, often frightfully ugly, an4 always stupid in the highest 

 degree ; the Europeans themselves brutalised by the climate and 

 by indolence — all this might well have cooled the most hvely 

 imagination. 



After a long voyage, the smallest spot of earth, the slightest 

 appearance of verdure, seem a paradise to the navigator, and 

 when it is on the Friendly Islands, or at Ouheite, that he land^ 



^ The first volume appeared in 1772, in quarto; the second in 1773, and 

 the third in 1776, in German, with a great number of plates and maps. There 

 is a French translation by M. Gauthier de la Peyronie, in four volumes, quarto, 

 Paris 1777 ; and a second edition with notes by MM. Lamarck and Langles, 

 Pans, second year of the EepubUc, eight Yolumes octavo, with an Atlas. 



