MEMOIR OF PALLAS. 4} 
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 inview. 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 
