22 HISTORY OF

all travelling charges, besides the promise of a handsome reward at theconclusion of any work.

Captain Perry was immediately sent to Moscow, with orders, thaton his arrival there he should be directly forwarded to the province ofAstracan, a thousand wersts or Russian miles (a werst, or wurst, is aboutthree quarters of an English mile) beyond Moscow, to survey the workwhich colonel Breckell had begun; and on his arrival there he foundthe work blown up, and colonel Breckell gone, as has been beforerelated.

Upon this work captain Perry was employed three summers suc-cessively, with orders to have thirty thousand men to work; but heseldom had above half that number; and the last year not ten thousandmen, nor the necessary artificers, or materials sufficiently provided ; forthe governor of Astracan, and all the principal boyars, or nobility ofthat country, obstinately opposed the undertaking, declaring it a thingimpossible to be effected by the hands of men. The governor repre-sented it as burthensoine to the country, from the great numbers ofmen employed in it, and used all his endeavours to cause it to be aban-doned as impracticable; saying, that God had made the rivers to goone way, and it was presumption in man to think to turn them ano-ther.

The czar having been defeated by the Swedes at the battle of Narva,in the latter end of the year 1701, captain Perry received orders to meetthe emperor at Moscow, and to let all the works stand still; leaving oneof his assistants there to take care of what was done, some of the sluicesbeing finished, and others nearly so, and the canal half dug.

In the year 1702 captain Perry was sent to Veronize, a city situatedon a river of the same name, which falls into the Don, to six on aplace near the mouth of that large river, to lay the czar’s navy upon

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