Introduction.

When the following “Notes upon Russia” are presented to the reader as the earliest description of that country, the statement, though substantially and for all essential purposes correct, must not be allowed to pass without a word of modification. As we shall presently take occasion to show, the Baron Sigismund von Herberstein was preceded by numerous travellers to Russia, the record of whose peregrinations could scarcely have been handed down to us without some slight allusion to the character of the country they visited; yet from none of them have we received anything that could with reason be referred to as an authentic description of the country and its people, derived, as all such descriptions should be, from lengthened personal observation and industrious inquiry. The present work, however, which embodies the experience and observations of a sagacious and pains-taking man, during two periods of residence, in all about sixteen months, in Moscow, as ambassador from the Emperor of Germany to the Tzar, has won for its author so high a reputation for correctness and minuteness of detail, that he has been thought iiby many (and one of the number is the learned historian, August Ludwig Schlözer himself) worthy of the designation of the “Discoverer of Russia”. The “Rerum Moscoviticarum Commentarii” has been a standing book of reference for all subsequent historians of the great empire of the north; and it is not without good reason that the distinguished biographer of Herber stein, Friedrich Adelung (to whose works, as quoted below, ¹ the editor is mainly indebted for the materials of this introduction) expresses his surprise that a work of such importance should so long have remained untranslated, either into the Polish, the French, the Dutch, or the English languages. Especially is this expression of astonishment applicable, as he justly observes, to England and Holland,—countries which have for nearly three centuries maintained commercial relations with the Russian empire. The scope of the work comprises brief but interesting, and in many cases highly amusing, sketches of the history, antiquities, geography, and productions of the country, with the religion, form of government, peculiarities in matters of warfare, trade, domestic habits, and amusements of the people.