John Bell was a Scottish doctor in Russian service. Peter the Great sent Lev Izmailov as ambassador to the Kangxi emperor, and Bell asked to go in his train. They crossed Siberia by boat and sledge, waited a summer on the Mongolian border, crossed the Gobi to Peking, and got back to Moscow in January 1722.
Bell sets out for Moscow with two companions, to join the embassy of Lev Izmailov to China. The ambassador travels separately and passes them on the road.
Bell joins the ambassador at Moscow. The party spends five weeks getting boats and supplies ready, then rows down the Moskva and Oka rivers to the Volga.
Bell knew Kazan from his earlier journey to Persia. With frost coming on, the embassy leaves its boats here, waits about five weeks for snow and takes to sledges for the road north-east over the Urals.
The embassy rests at the capital of Siberia. Bell describes the Russian town on the hill and the Tatar streets below, and buys scrolls said to come from the Seven Palaces far up the Irtysh, a ruin he hears about but does not see.
Editorial contextBell notes that the Tartar princes of Siberia once lived about thirty versts from Tobolsk at a place now 'neglected and ruinous' (he does not name it; it is probably the old khanate capital Isker, or Kashlyk). The Russian town on the hill has a brick wall, the governor's palace and brick churches, while the Tatars, descendants of the old inhabitants, live in several 'Tartar-streets' in the lower suburb along the river, with freedom of religion and trade.
Formerly the Tartar princes had their abode at a place about thirty verst south from Tobolsky, which is now neglected and ruinous. … Under the hill in the suburbs, along the banks of the river, are several large streets, called the Tartar-streets, occupied by the remains of the ancient inhabitants of these parts.
Editorial contextBell did not visit this building on the upper Irtysh, but reports what he was told: a regular brick or stone edifice of seven rooms under one roof, standing alone in the steppe. Local Tartars credited it to Tamerlane or to Genghis Khan. Its rooms were full of scrolls in the writing of the 'Tongusts, or Kalmucks' (probably meaning Tanguts, that is Tibetans, or Kalmyks); Bell bought a bundle from a soldier in Tobolsk and gave some to Sir Hans Sloane. The Tibetan or Kalmyk writing suggests a Kalmyk (Oirat) Buddhist building rather than a work of Tamerlane, and the ruin, 'Sem Palaty', later gave the city of Semipalatinsk (Semey) its name.
It is very surprising to find such a regular edifice in the middle of a desert. Some of the Tartars say it was built by Tamerlane, called by the Tartars Temyr-Ack-Sack or Lame-Temyr; others by Gingeez-Chan. The building, according to the best information I could obtain, is of brick or stone, well finished, and continues still entire. It consists of seven apartments under one roof,
The sledges follow the banks of the Irtysh from one Tatar village to the next and reach Tara in six days. On the way the party sleeps in Tatar log huts, where a pane of ice serves as the window.
Editorial contextTravelling up the Irtysh in midwinter, Bell's party passes many Tatar villages and sleeps in their huts. He describes one- or two-room log houses chinked with moss, a broad bench for sitting and sleeping, and, in place of glass, a pane of ice cut to fit the window. The next page adds that these Tatars are very clean and use open hearths rather than Russian stoves.
These houses consist generally of one or two rooms, according to the ability of the landlord. … The walls are built of wood and moss, consisting of large beams, laid one above another, with a layer of moss between every two beams. All the roofs are raised. A square-hole is cut out for a window, and to supply the want of glass, a piece of ice
The party takes ten days to cross the Baraba to the Ob. On the way it visits a well known woman shaman, and Bell watches her bring out her spirit image and drum.
Editorial contextThe ambassador made a point of testing the shamans he met. In the Baraba the party visited a famous female shaman who ignored them until she had smoked, drunk brandy and received presents. She then brought out her spirit image and a ringed drum and sang with her neighbours. Bell judged her answers as ambiguous as any oracle's, and noted she was young and very handsome.
First, she brought the shaytan; which is nothing but a piece of wood, wherein is cut something resembling a human head, adorned with many silk and woolen rags, of various colours; then, a small drum, about a foot diameter, to which were fixed many brass and iron rings, and hung round also with rags.
At Tomsk Bell hears of the grave mounds on the plain eight or ten days to the south, which people dig each summer for gold and silver. He sees some of the finds himself.
Editorial contextSouth of Tomsk lie many burial mounds of earth and stones. Bell was told that Russians went out every summer to dig them for gold, silver and weapons, and he saw some of the finds himself, including a brass horseman and gold deer figures. From the horse bones and weapons he concludes that great men were buried with their horse and servant, a custom he says the Kalmyks still keep; the Kalmyks, who hate disturbing the dead, sometimes robbed the grave-robbers. His Baraba Tartar informants credited the battles to Tamerlane.
Many persons go from Tomsky, and other parts, every summer, to these graves; which they dig up, and find, among the ashes of the dead, considerable quantities of gold, silver, brass… Whence it appears, that when any general or person of distinction, was interred, all his arms, his favourite horse and servant, were buried with him in the same grave;
site now under the Ust-Ilimsk reservoir, Irkutsk Oblast, Russia
The party leaves the Tunguska and goes up the Ilim to this small town. It then cuts through thick woods to the Angara and follows that river up to Irkutsk.
1018 March to 15 May 1720
Irkutsk
The embassy reaches Irkutsk at the end of winter and waits for the ice on Lake Baikal to break up. In the middle of May it crosses the lake by boat and goes up the Selenga.
1129 May to 9 September 1720
Selenginsk
Novoselenginsk, Buryatia, Russia
The party waits all summer at this border town for a guide from Peking and leave to enter China. In this part of his book Bell describes the Mongols, who live in tents and keep no houses, and the three great princes between the Volga and the Great Wall.
Editorial contextWaiting at Selenginsk on the Mongolian border, Bell sums up Mongol life: in all of Mongolia there is not one house, and even the prince and the high lama live in tents that move with the herds. He adds that they do not plough at all, and admits that he finds this simple life pleasant in so dry a climate. The prince's camp at Urga, he explains a few pages later, is a moving city of several thousand tents.
…of Mongalia, there is not so much as a single house to be seen. All the people, even the prince and high priest, live constantly in tents; and remove, with their cattle, from place to place, as conveniency requires. These people do not trouble themselves with ploughing, or digging the ground in any fashion;
Editorial contextBell names the three great 'Tartar princes' between the Volga and China: Ayuka Khan of the Volga Kalmyks, the Kontaysha of the Dzungars and the Tushetu Khan of the Khalkha Mongols. He treats all their subjects as one Kalmyk nation with the same looks, religion and language, and marvels at how far a traveller could go with that one language.
From the river Volga, to the wall of China, there are three great Tartar princes; the Ayuka-Chan, the Kontaysha, and the Tush-du-Chan. These three mighty nations have almost the same features, religion, and language; and live in the same manner. … whose subjects go by the general name of Kalmuks.
The embassy fords the Tola river in the lands of the Tushetu Khan and changes horses and camels. Bell did not see the Urga, the moving tent city of the prince and the high lama, but he had written down at Selenginsk what Mongols told him about it.
Editorial contextBell reports what Mongols told him about their chief lama, the Kutuchtu at Urga. On the previous page he describes how a boy successor is 'found' by making him pick out his predecessor's belongings. Here he adds the popular belief that the Kutuchtu had lived fourteen generations and grew young and old again with each month.
The Mongalls relate, that their Kutuchtu has now lived fourteen generations, and renews his age every moon; for, at the new moon, he appears like a youth; when she is full, like a full-grown man; but, when near the change, he is an old man with grey hairs.
About four weeks of travel from well to well across the dry, treeless plain that Bell calls the Hungry Desert, on the caravan line toward the Great Wall.
142 to 5 November 1720
The Great Wall at Kalgan
Zhangjiakou, Hebei, China
Bell first sees the wall on 2 November, running along the mountain tops. On 5 November the embassy passes through a great guarded gate and lodges at the town of Kalgan a few miles on.
1518 November 1720 to 2 March 1721
Peking
Beijing, China
The embassy enters Peking on 18 November 1720 and lodges in the Tartar city. The Kangxi emperor first receives the ambassador on 28 November, and over the winter Bell walks the streets and writes down what he is told of Chinese history.
Editorial contextEntering Peking with the Russian embassy, Bell's party rides for two hours through crowded streets to lodgings in the part of the city called the 'Tartar's town', near its centre. This is the inner walled city where the Manchu garrison families lived, so called because Europeans called the Manchu rulers of China 'Tartars'.
After a march of two hours from the gate where we entered, we, at last, came to our lodgings, in that part of the city called the Tartar's town; which is near the center of Pekin,
Editorial contextWalking in Peking, Bell records the insults exchanged between Chinese and Manchus. The Chinese call a Tartar 'fish-skin coat' because the Manchus of the Amur live by fishing and wear fish-skin coats in summer. It is a small but telling glimpse of how the ruling 'Tartars' of China were still seen as northern forest people.
When a Chinese and Tartar are angry at one another, the Tartar, in reproach, calls the Chinese louse-eater; and the latter, in return, calls the other fish-skin coat; because the Mantzur Tartars, who live near the river Amoor, subsist by fishing, and, in summer, wear coats made of the skins of fishes.
The nameChina1721 (retelling events of the 1200s and 1640s)
Two different 'Tartar' conquests of China
Editorial contextIn Peking Bell retells the history as it was told to him: about five hundred years earlier 'western Tartars' (the Mongols) broke through the Great Wall and ruled China until driven out; then in the 1640s the Manchus conquered the whole empire. The passage shows that 'Tartar' covered both peoples, centuries apart.
However, about five hundred years ago, the western Tartars found means to get through the wall, and, with a powerful army of horse, entered the country, carrying terror along with them wherever they went. … From this time they enjoyed long peace, till the fatal year one thousand six hundred and forty, when the Mantzur Tartars conquered the whole empire of China; which conquest they retain to this day;
On the way home the party goes back through Siberia by boat, down the Angara, the Ket and the Ob to Surgut. The commandant here gives Bell a mammoth tusk, and Bell writes about the tusks found in Siberia and the stories told about the animal.
Editorial contextBell saw many 'mammon's horns' (mammoth tusks) in Siberian towns and brought one home to Hans Sloane. He thought they were elephant teeth and could not explain how they got so far north. His Tartar informants, however, said the mammoth was a living beast the size of an elephant that appears at dawn by lakes and dives into the water when seen, and tunnels under marshes with its horns.
The Tartars tell many fables of its having been seen alive. But to me it appears that this horn is the tooth of a large elephant. … I have been told by Tartars … that they have seen this creature, called mammon, at the dawn of day, near lakes and rivers; but, that on discovering them, the mammon immediately tumbles into the water,
How sure is the line? The towns and dates come from Bell's own journal, but the Baraba, Tola and Gobi stops are rough positions, the line from Kazan to Tobolsk skips his road by Solikamsk and Verkhoturye, and the return leg is drawn only through Surgut, though he also came back through Kalgan, Selenginsk, Irkutsk, Yeniseisk and Tobolsk. The line joins the stops. It is not the exact road.
What is still uncertain (13 notes)
All day-level dates are Bell's own, read from the 1763 Glasgow edition, and are presumably in the Old Style calendar used in Russia at the time. A few were checked in a second scan because the first was badly printed (9 September 1719, 9 January 1720, 9 March 1720).
Bell gives 5 January 1722 for the arrival at Moscow. The Dictionary of National Biography gives 6 January. The stop follows Bell.
Some modern summaries give 18 December 1720 for the entry into Peking. Bell's text gives 18 November 1720, which fits his 'exactly sixteen months' from July 1719 and his date of 28 November for the first audience.
Bell is usually described as the embassy's doctor. In the book he says only that he asked to make the journey in the ambassador's train, so the text does not call him the embassy's physician.
Bell did not see the Seven Palaces (Semipalatinsk). He heard about the ruin and bought the scrolls at Tobolsk, so that passage sits at Tobolsk, not on the upper Irtysh.
Bell does not say he saw the Urga. He places it about six days south-east of Selenginsk and describes it from hearsay in his Selenginsk chapter (page 280 of volume 1). The embassy forded the Tola on 3 October 1720, but the exact ford is not known, and the Urga was a moving camp, so the modern Ulaanbaatar point is only a rough position for both.
The Gobi point is a rough mid-point on the line from the Tola to Kalgan, not a documented camp. It is not the gazetteer's Gobi point, which lies far to the west of the route. Bell names many wells on the way, but they were not located.
Bell does not name the gate where he passed the Great Wall. He says only that Kalgan lay about four miles beyond it, so the stop is placed at Kalgan (Zhangjiakou).
The Baraba point is the middle of the steppe. Bell does not say where on the ten day crossing the shaman lived.
Ilimsk was flooded by the Ust-Ilimsk reservoir in the 1970s. The point given is the old town site.
The mammoth passage is in Bell's entry for Surgut (11 September 1721), but the stories of the living animal were told to him by Tatars in the Baraba, and he saw tusks in many towns between Tobolsk and Yeniseisk.
Selenginsk is placed at modern Novoselenginsk. The old town stood on the opposite, eastern bank of the Selenga a short distance away.
With Ilimsk added there are 17 stops, one more than the suggested 16. The return leg is still drawn as one jump from Peking to Surgut and one from Surgut to Moscow.