with the king of Poland. He therefore delivered this paper to the king, begging for his assistance, and had the pleasure to find the king quite willing to take upon himself the payment of this debt. Herberstein says, in his own words, “He sent me word that when I returned he would give me a favourable answer, and afterwards sent me a thousand florins in good Hungarian gold, like an honest king.”
On the 14th of February, Herberstein and his party left Cracow; and were now able to continue their journey on sledges, which was very convenient for their luggage. They proceeded by way of Lublin to Brest, through a dreadful and very dangerous snow-drift, which compelled them to pass the whole night on the ground under their sledges, which they turned upside down for a screen. Thence to Borisov on the Beresina, which Herberstein supposed to be the Borysthenes of the ancients, drawing his conclusions from Ptolemy and the similarity of the name. From Beresina they did not take the nearest way by Wilna, in consequence of the wildness of the road, but took the way by Mohilev and Dobrovna to Smolensko.
Upon Herberstein’s arrival at the Russian frontier, before reaching Smolensko, the providor who had been sent from Moscow, instead of treating him hospitably by providing him with provisions and a roof, allowed him to be two nights under the open air—one on the snow, and another during a fall of rain. Nor would he even permit him to buy food with his own money, saying, that he ought to be satisfied with the provisions with which he supplied
