Page:Notes upon Russia (volume 2, 1851).djvu/74

Bread is very seldom used in that province; and they pay their yearly tribute to the prince in horses and furs. They have an idiom of their own; they have also characters peculiar to themselves, which were invented by one Stephen, a bishop, who had been the means of confirming them in the faith of Christ, at a time when they were vacillating in the matter of religion: indeed, at a former period, while they were yet infants in the faith, they flayed a certain bishop who had made a similar attempt. This Stephen was afterwards enrolled amongst the number of the gods by the Russians, in the reign of Dimitry Ivanovich. There still remain many idolaters amongst them, scattered here and there in the woods, whom the monks and hermits who wander into those parts strive unceasingly to reclaim from their error and profitless worship. In winter they travel here, as in most parts of Russia, almost entirely in artach, which are a sort of oblong wooden shoes, nearly six palms in length, which they fasten on the foot, and perform their journeys with great speed. They use for beasts of burden large dogs, which are very useful for this purpose, with which they convey baggage in carriages, in the same manner as will be hereafter described in speaking of the deer. They say that that province borders eastward upon the Tartar province called Tumen.

The situation of the province Jugaria is shown by what has been already said. The Russians pronounce the word Juhra with an aspirate, and call the people Juhrici; this is Juharia, whence the Hungarians proceeded when they took possession of Pannonia, and subdued many provinces of Europe under their leader Attila. The Muscovites are very boastful of this name, because their subjects formerly devastated great part of Europe. George, called the Little, who was a Greek by birth, wishing, in the treatises which he wrote at the time of my first embassy, to extend the sway of his prince over the grand duchy of Lithuania, the kingdom