MEMOIR OF PALLAS. 41 



favourable. Long winters of six months duration, 

 spent in a miserable cabin, with black bread and 

 brandy for his only luxuries, at a temperature which 

 froze mercury, and a summer*s heat almost insup- 

 portable the few weeks it lasted; with his time 

 fully occupied in clambering rocks and fording mo- 

 rasses, in pioneering a road through thick forests, 

 amidst myriads of insects which darken the air, and 

 almost devour you, amongst people who bear the 

 stamp of all the miseries of their country, generally 

 disgustingly dirty, often frightfully ugly, and always 

 dreadfully stupid, — all this could not but damp the 

 liveliest imagination." 



In encountering these very different estimates of 

 our author s most voluminous work, it will be well 

 to consider the real aim he had in view. He under- 

 took a journey over regions which were almost 

 wholly unknown to the civilized world ; he did so 

 at the country's expense, and under the most favour- 

 able and illustrious auspices ; expectation was in the 

 last degree excited, and curiosity was impatient for 

 gratification, so that each volume was published as 

 it was filled. Under these circumstances the work 

 could only be considered as a journal or itinerary, 

 and it should never be regarded in any other light. 

 This was unquestionably the light in which the 

 author himself regarded it, as it was the view taken 

 by his contemporaries, and hence the high mead of 

 praise they so invariably bestowed upon it. As the 

 author himself remarks, " the encomiums which 

 many learned men have bestowed on this treatise 



