PRELIMINARY OBSERVATIONS. 
among these people that the political differences 
of England and Russia drove the Author, a 
willing exile, from the cities of Petersburg and 
Moscow, in the last year of the eighteenth 
century. Necessity and inclination were 
coupled together ; and he had the double satis- 
faction, of escaping persecution from the 
enemies of his country, and of surveying- 
regions which, in the warmest sallies of hope, 
he had never thought it would be his destiny 
to explore. 
In the course of this journey, through exten- 
sive plains which have been improperly called 
deserts, and among a secluded people who 
with as little reason have been deemed savages, 
he had certainly neither the luxuries and dis- 
sipation of polished cities, nor the opportunities 
of indolence, to interrupt his attention to his 
journal. If therefore it fail to interest the 
public, he has no apology to offer. He presents 
it in a state as similar as possible to that 
wherein notes written upon the spot were 
made ; as containing whatsoever his feeble 
abilities were qualified to procure, either for 
information or amusement; and adhering, in 
every representation, strictly to the truth. 
