★ Keep up to date with the latest news - subscribe to the Transcribe Bentham newsletter; Find a new page to transcribe in our list of Untranscribed Manuscripts
other two: it owes its birth to a cause to which
so many others have owed their depopulation;
meaning the Plague. The Russians in consequence of
the p treaty which put them in possession of that
part of Little Tartary which lies between the
Bog and the Dnieper, established at the jun on their side
of this central spot, a post for the observance
of the quarantine. Through this place pass all
letters between Petersburgh and Constantinople:
at this place the Russian Courier who sets out once
a month fortnight from Constantinople, stops, at the
Quarantine house: he there leaves his bag, which
after having been fumigated and so forth, is
forwarded by another courier through the
Russian Empire, and returns himself to the
capital from whence he came.
At this same Bohopol I arrived yesterday
evening (Sunday Jan: 15): after dusk: in anxious expectation
of answers to 2 out of 3 letters: I sent
to Sam, by so many successive couriers, from
Constantinople. A thaw which just now as
my ill stars would have it, has destroy'd
the snow-roads all around, and deluged
the ice of the Sinjuka: render'd a passage
across that river either for a myself, or for
a Messenger, difficult: the police of this town
render'd it impracticable. This morning I
found means to send a Messenger with a
letter to Major Poulivitch the Russian
Port-master enclosing two letters of introduction
from so many different persons in Constantinople
and Bucharest: the messenger brought
me - not a letter from Sam which I much
expected, but a letter from you which assuredly
I did not expect. Disappointed of necessaries
I have got a luxury to console me. I had
proposed to him in my first, and more particularly
in my second, to send somebody to
Olviopol to meet me: now have I got between
7 & 800 miles to travel alone, in a wild country,
of the language of which I know not a
single syllable. Under these circumstances it
would be cruelty to you to send off this letter
before I reach Crichoff if ever I should reach it.
Not a creature established at Olviopol understands
either Italian or French or English: so my old
fellow-traveller Mr Schneider informs me, in
answer to my French note to Major Poulevich
But his track coincides with mine at least
as far as Kremenchuck, which is about 120
miles on my way. There he tells me I shall
meet with people who have French tongues in
their heads, and thither he invites me to bear him
company, which I shall most gladly do. There
too I shall fall in with Sam's route in his
way between Crichoff and the Crim in the
with of Prince Potemkin: as he staid there some
days he must have made acquaintance on
an advantageous footing with the Governor
and so forth. Now you see the other side of
the picture: so that all things consider'd, whatever
you may be, I am as easy as an old
shoe.
Before you fold up your map do but look at
a pace called there Konicepole : (it should be
Konietepol.) Why this most beggarly of all beggarly
villages I ever saw, and which never could
have been any thing better, should be honoured
with a place in the map of Europe is more than in preference to at
I can conceive least half a dozen more fitter which I saw within the space which
the name of it occupies upon the map, is more
than I can conceive. It has hardly more hovels than there are good houses on Pye on Green. In fact it is within 3
miles of the site of Bohopol: whereas it is represented
as if at least 20 miles distant. The
same error is copied into a Russian map of
the province of New Russia ( in which lies Olviopol)
of the year 1779. To the left of the Bog you
will see a river called Rodome,, with an R:
instead of Kodina with a K, as it should be.
It does empty iteself into the Bog, but if my information
here is just, at more than six miles
distance from the junction of the latter with the
Sinyuka.
Before this reaches you, you will have received,
I hope, a letter which of mine from
Yaffi to Mr Paton
at Constantinople, as I particularly
desired him to forward it to you. From
Bucharest I had already sent a kind of imperfect
journal, contained in one or two large sheets. I forget
which, to Mr Henderson, with a similar request.
|
Identifier: | JB/540/240/002 "JB/" can not be assigned to a declared number type with value 540.
|
|||
|---|---|---|---|
|
1786-01-16 |
|||
|
540 |
|||
|
240 |
|||
|
002 |
|||
|
Correspondence |
|||
|
Samuel Bentham |
|||