talking; and I humbly dedicate and commend myself to the patronage of Your Majesty, in whose service I have grown old, and pray Your Majesty to deign to accept this book with the same clemency and kindness which Your Majesty has ever vouchsafed to its author himself.

Vienna, First of March 1549.

The same, Your Majesty's faithful Councillor and Chamberlain, and Governor of the Austrian Treasury,

SIGISMUND,

Baron of Herberstein, Neyperg, and Guettenhag.

TO THE READER.

IN thus entering upon the description of Moscow, which is the capital of Russia, and which extends its sway far and wide through Scythia, it will be indispensable, candid reader, that I should in this work touch upon many parts of the north, which have not been sufficiently known either to ancient authors or those of our own day, and it will follow that I shall sometimes be compelled to differ from the accounts they give. And in order that my opinion in this matter may not be looked upon with suspicion, or considered presumptuous, I assert with all honesty, that not once only, but repeatedly, while engaged as ambassador for the Emperor Maximilian, and his grandson Ferdinand king of the Romans, I have seen and investigated Moscow, as it were under my very eyes (as the saying is); that I made myself acquainted with the greater part of the talented and trustworthy men of the place, and did not rely upon this or that man's account, but trusted only to the unvarying statements of the many; and having the advantage of knowing the Sclavonic language, which is identical with the Russian and Muscovitic, I have written these things and handed them down to the memory of posterity, not only as an ear, but as an eye-witness, and that not with any disguise in my description, but openly and freely.

But, in like manner as every nation has its own peculiar mode of pronunciation, so also the Russians connect and join together their letters in various ways, after a fashion to which we are quite unaccustomed; so that no one who did not pay particular attention to their pronunciation, would be able either conveniently to ask them a question, or to gain any intelligible reply. Since, therefore, in my description of Russia, I have, not without consideration, used Russian words in naming objects, places, and rivers, I have thought it right thus at the outset briefly to show the connexion and force of certain letters; by observing which, the reader will be enabled to understand many things more easily, and occasionally, perhaps, be induced to extend his inquiries.

B

The Russians write and spell Basilius with the consonant w;1 yet as we have grown into the habit of writing and spelling it with a b, I have not thought it necessary to write it with the w; c placed before an aspirate, should not be pronounced ci or schi, as some nations are accustomed to write it, but khi, after the manner of the Germans, as in the words Chiovia, Chan, Chlinov, Chlopigorod, etc. But when a double z is prefixed, it should be pronounced in a rather more sonorous manner,—as Czeremisse, Czernigo, Czilma, Czunkas, etc. The Russians express g with an aspirated h more strongly than is the custom of other Sclavonians, and almost after the Bohemian fashion,-as when they write Iugra, Wolga, they pronounce Iuhra, Wolha.

The letter i receives the fullest force of a consonant,-as in Iausa, Iaroslaw, Iamma, Ieropolchus, etc.

This pronounced almost like ph,- thus, Theodore is called

Pheodore or Feodore.

When has the force of a consonant, I have put in the place of it w, which the Germans express by double u, as in Wolodimeria, Worothin, Wedrasch, Wisma, Wladislaus. But when the same letter is placed in the middle or at the end of a word, it receives the force or sound of the Greek letter phi,—as Oczakow [Ochakov], Rostow [Rostov], Asow [Azov], Owka [Ovka]. The reader will carefully observe the force of this letter, lest by a careless pronunciation one and the same word might seem to imply different things.

Moreover, in treating of the annals, origin, and deeds of the Russians, I have not used our number of years, but theirs ; lest in differing from their documents, I might seem to assume the character rather of a corrector than of a faithful interpreter.

1 The reader is begged to observe that this is Herberstein's explanation of his own mode of expressing the force of Russian letters in Roman character. The Russians spell Basilius with a letter of the form of our b, and holding the third place in their alphabet, but having the sound of the English and the German w. This accounts for Herberstein, who was a German, representing this sound by the letter w; but there is no w in Russian.

2 The era of Constantinople, which was adopted by the Russians from the Greek church, and continued in use until the reign of Peter the Great, fixes the creation of the world in the 5508th year before Christ, the year of whose incarnation fell in the 5509th of this era.

NOTES UPON RUSSIA.

VARIOUS are the opinions entertained respecting the origin of the name of Russia. Some maintain that it is derived from one Russus, a prince of the Poles, and brother or nephew of Lech, as though he himself had been a prince of the Russians. Others again derive it from a certain very ancient town, named Russum,' not far from Great Novogorod. Some also derive it from the dark colour of the people; and some think that, by a change in the word, Russia has received its designation from Roxolania. The Muscovites, however, contradict those who maintain these discrepant opinions, and assert, that it was anciently called Rosseia, as a nation dispersed and scattered, which indeed the name implies. For Rosseia, in the language of the Russians, means a dissemination or dispersion; and the variety of races even now blended with the inhabitants and the various provinces of Russia lying promiscuously intermingled, manifestly prove that this is correct. It is well known also to those who read the sacred writings, that the prophets use a word expressing dissemination when they speak of the dispersion of nations. There are not wanting those also, who by a somewhat similar process of reasoning, derive the name of the Russians from a

2

1 Staraia Russa, Anglicè Old Russa, to the south of Lake Ilmen. * Herberstein appears here to allude to Leviticus, chap. xxvi, verse 23, and Ezekiel, chap. xxii, verse 15, and other passages, where occurs the Hebrew root, to scatter, probably connected with y, to sow.

Greek, and hence from a Chaldaic origin, viz., from the Greek word pous, a flowing, or from a kind of dispersion, as it were, by drops, which is called by the Aramæans,' Resissaia or Ressaia; just as the Galli and Umbri have received their appellations from the Hebrew words, Gall and Gallim, and from Umber, i. e., floods, storms, and inundations; which is as much as to call them an inconstant and stormy people, or a nation liable to burst out and run over. But whatever be the source from which Russia has derived its name, all the races using the Sclavonic language that observe both the faith and the forms of Christianity in accordance with the ritual of the Greeks, and are called in conventional language Russians, and in Latin Rhuteni, have increased to so great a multitude, that they have either driven out all intermediate nations, or have absorbed them into their own habits of living; so that all may now be designated by one common word, Russians.

Moreover, the Slavonic language,—which, by a slight corruption of the word, is called Sclavonic at the present day,— has a most extensive range: for the Dalmatians, the Bosnians, the Croatians, the Istrians, and those who dwell along the Adriatic in a long tract of country as far as Friuli; the Carni, whom the Venetians call Charsi; the Carniolians also, and the Carinthians, as far as the Drave; the Styrians, like

1 The inhabitants of Syria and Mesopotamia, so named as the descendants of Aram the fifth son of Shem. The name of Aram, given in Genesis to Syria, extended itself also to Mesopotamia, Chaldea, Assyria, and Elam. The languages spoken in the ancient country of Aram,-viz., the Syriac and Chaldean,— -are still called Aramæan languages.

2 A people of Gallia Transpadana, whose boundaries are thus given by Pliny, Livy, and others on the east, the river Formio, which divided them from the Istri ; on the north, the Julian Alps, by which they were separated from Noricum; on the south, the Adriatic; and on the west, the River Tagliamento, which divided them from the Veneti. Thus they occupied the country which now forms the eastern part of the province of Friuli and the county of Goritz. The capital was Aquileia, now Aglar, a small town lying about midway between Palma Nuova and the sea.