8. The Portuguese ambassador invited him to dine, and was so much
pleased with him, that he used his influence to obtain for him a free
passage in the government wagons, then going to Irkutsk, in Siberia, at
the command of the Empress Katharine.
9. He went from this place to Yakutz, and there awaited the opening of
the spring, full of the animating hope of soon completing his wearisome
journey. But misfortune seemed to follow him wherever he went.
10. The empress could not believe that any man in his senses was
traveling through the ice and snows of uncivilized Siberia, merely for
the sake of seeing the country and the people.
11. She imagined that he was an English spy, sent there merely for the
purpose of prying into the state of her empire and her government. She
therefore employed two Russian soldiers to seize him, and convey him out
of her dominions.
12. Taken, he knew not why, and obliged to go off without his clothes,
his money, or his papers, he was seated in one of the strange-looking
sledges used in those northern deserts, and carried through Tartary and
White Russia, to the frontiers of Poland.
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