capital article in their public museum at Amsterdam, where the exhibitor
relates the whole story to each spectator, with such additions as he
thinks proper. Some of his variations are rather extravagant; one of
them is, that the lion jumped quite through the crocodile, and was
making his escape at the back door, when, as soon as his head appeared,
Monsieur the Great Baron (as he is pleased to call me) cut it off,
and three feet of the crocodile's tail along with it; nay, so little
attention has this fellow to the truth, that he sometimes adds, as soon
as the crocodile missed his tail, he turned about, snatched the _couteau
de chasse_ out of Monsieur's hand, and swallowed it with such eagerness
that it pierced his heart and killed him immediately!

The little regard which this impudent knave has to veracity makes me
sometimes apprehensive that my _real facts_ may fall under suspicion, by
being found in company with his confounded inventions.



CHAPTER II

_In which the Baron proves himself a good shot--He loses his horse,
and finds a wolf--Makes him draw his sledge--Promises to entertain
his company with a relation of such facts as are well deserving their
notice._

I set off from Rome on a journey to Russia, in the midst of winter, from
a just notion that frost and snow must of course mend the roads, which
every traveller had described as uncommonly bad through the northern
parts of Germany, Poland, Courland, and Livonia. I went on horseback, as
the most convenient manner of travelling; I was but lightly clothed, and