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I AM informed by a letter from the king of Sarmatia that there are certain affairs of which you ought to be informed as soon as possible. In order, therefore, to hasten the despatches which his courier was charged with to you, I granted him an order to make use of the public post.20

The same thing in manner dooth Sophronius the patriarch of Ierusalem witnesse, Tertullian also maie be a witnesse of the ancientnes of the faith receiued here in Britaine, where he writing of these times saith: Those places of the Britains, to the which the Romans could not approch, were subiect vnto Christ, as were also the countries of Sarmatia, Dacia, Germania, Scithia, and others. ¶ Thus it maie appeare, that the christian religion was planted here in this land shortlie after Christes time, although it certeinlie appeareth not who were the first that preached the gospell to the Britains, nor whether they were Gréeks or Latins.

It is as if my left hand should say to my right: Thank you for tending my wound; thank you for your generous sympathy with my pain. Adyrmachus, on hearing of the trick that had been played upon him, did not pursue his journey to Bosphorus; indeed, Eubiotus was already on the throne, having been summoned thither from his home in Sarmatia.

But, in sad process of time, "strangers of Rome, of Gaul, and of other nations," in whose veins not a drop of Sclavonian blood flowed, found means to successively seat themselves on the throne of the Piasts, the Jagellons, and the Sobieskis, of ancient Sarmatia; and the revered fabric fell, as by an earthquake, to be registered no more amongst the kingdoms of the world.

By presents, by arms, and by a slight fortification drawn across the Isthmus, they effectually guarded against the roving plunderers of Sarmatia, the access of a country, which, from its peculiar situation and convenient harbors, commanded the Euxine Sea and Asia Minor.

The various nations of Germany and Sarmatia, united under the Gothic standard, and in six thousand vessels, prepared once more to ravage the world. Sailing from the banks of the Dniester, they crossed the Euxine, passed through the Bosphorus, anchored at the foot of Mount Athos, and assaulted Thessalonica, the wealthy capital of the Macedonian provinces.

But a courier passing through this place from the king of Sarmatia,19 I embrace the opportunity which accidentally offers itself, of sending with him the messenger which Lycormas despatched hither, that you might be informed by both their letters of what, perhaps, it may be expedient you should be acquainted with at one and the same time.

In short, I have omitted nothing deserving of notice, that occurred during my three years journey, having left Venice on the first day of Lent, in the year 1473, and having returned to my beloved country on the 24th of February in the year 1476 ." The Ambassador, after passing through Germany, Poland, Russia, and the Tartarian Deserts, or Upper European Sarmatia, arrives at Caffa or Theodosia.

And still, after the death of that mysteriously-destined sovereign, a halcyon sky seemed to hold its bland aspects over Russia's Sclavonian sister people, ancient Sarmatia. But ere long the scene changed, and the "seething-pot" of a universal ambition, the crucible of nations, grasped by the hand of Napoleon, began again to darken the world's atmosphere.

There were Terrae Incognitae in every continent then, Poland, Sarmatia, lands since lost; and many a voyage I made with a blunted pin about that large, incorrect and dignified world. The books in that little old closet had been banished, I suppose, from the saloon during the Victorian revival of good taste and emasculated orthodoxy, but my mother had no suspicion of their character.