Waite Captain Barnaby's. rapid and adventurous ride to Khiva: ie still: fresh in our minds, it will not be un. interesting to call to mind the different, conditions under which such journey. was accomplished two hundred: years ago, even by an Envoy from: the: Imperial Court of Russia itself. The", record of this—in those days very serious—undertaking is still preserved in the archives of the Ministry of. Foreign Affairs at Moscow, and last. year the Czar graciously gave his permission that these old-world documenta should be disinterred from their pigeon. holes and communicated to the. International Congress of Orientalista at St. Petersburg, for the edification of the. savants there assembled. By the courtesy of the Russian officials, Capt. F. C. H. Clarke, of the Topographical Department of our War Office, who: attended the Congress as the delegate. of the Royal Geographical Society, waa enabled to bring home a translation. of; them, to which we are indebted for-any account of the circumstances connected. with this ride to Khiva in 1671.
In the year of grace 1669, the Czar Alexis,—the father of our old friend:. Peter the Great, whose will, real ar. supposed, keeps turning up every now, and again to plague us in these latter
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.