62 MEMOIR OF PALLAS. 
travelling, like that of a savage life, made him 
impatient of a stated residence in a city. 
Equally tired of a sedentary life and of the influx 
of the fashionable world, whether foreign or native, 
for which the mansion of so celebrated a man was 
the natural rendezvous, he eagerly seized the oppor- 
tunity which the conquest of the Crimea afforded of 
visiting new countries, and spent the years 1793 
and 1794 in travelling, at his own expense, over 
the southern provinces of the empire. He was 
accompanied by an able draftsman and other pro- 
fessional assistants, who afforded him all possible 
facilities for improving his opportunities ; and hence 
his published work is literally crowded with sketches 
of all sorts, with views, maps, &c. 
He again visited Astrakan, and travelled over 
the frontiers of Circassia,—that mountainous region, 
which supports some of the finest races of the 
species. This country is also remarkable for the 
great number of tribes, differing in language and 
appearance, which it maintains in its ravines,—the 
small remnants of those nations which traversed it 
at the time of the vast migrations of mankind,— 
the Huns, the Allans, the Bulgarians, and those 
many other barbarians, whose very names were 
almost as terrible as their cruelty, and who left 
colonies amid the precipices of the Caucasus; and 
hence it has been remarked, that we may here find 
mankind in samples. An account of these travels 
appeared in German in 1799, in French in 1801, 
