Page:Notes upon Russia (volume 2, 1851).djvu/35

That disorder was very prevalent when I was at Moscow, and took off one of my servants; but from the people being accustomed to live in so wholesome a climate, if the plague at any time be raging in Novogorod, Smolensko, or Plescow, from fear of contagion they exclude from their own country any people who come thence to them.

The people of Moscow are more cunning and deceitful than all others, their honour being especially slack in business contracts, — of which fact they themselves are by no means ignorant, for whenever they traffick with foreigners, they pretend, in order to attain greater credit, that they are not men of Moscow, but strangers.

The longest day in Moscow in the summer solstice, is said to be seventeen hours and three quarters. I could not, at that time, ascertain from any body the exact elevation of the pole, although one man told me, but upon uncertain authority, that he had heard it was fifty-eight degrees. At length I myself made a venture with the astrolabe, and on the ninth day of June, at noon, observed that the sun was at fifty-eight degrees. From which observation it was deduced, by the reckoning of men skilled in these things, that the elevation of the pole was fifty degrees, and that the longest day was seventeen hours and one quarter.

Moscow having received the first place in this description, I shall proceed to the other provinces subject to the Grand Duke, taking them in order as they lie eastward, whence going round by the south, and west, and north, we shall in due course come down again to the equinoctial east.

First comes the great city, Vladimir, which has a fortification of wood attached to it. This city, from the time of Vladimir, who was afterwards called Vasiley, to the reign of Ivan Danielovich, was the metropolis of Russia. Between the Wolga and the Occa, there are two great rivers, situated thirty-six German miles eastward from Moscow, in a spot so