In proceeding towards the Tobol, our traveller was alarmed by a report that the Kirghees were making an incursion into the interjacent territory, and prudently turned out of his way to avoid an encounter with these rude barbarians. At Kaminskaia several of his companions fell sick, some with fever, some with scorbutic rheumatism, while others became a prey to melancholy. His movements, for these reasons, were slow. The weather, meanwhile, was exceedingly severe; the snow falling heavily, accompanied by cold wind. The last days of April were marked by a terrible hurricane, and May was commenced with hard frost; notwithstanding which, neither the young flowers nor the buds suffered any particular injury. On the 2d of May one of his attendants died of scurvy, which had afflicted him for five months, and was accompanied by symptoms no less violent than those which attend the same disorder at sea. This event, which would have cost some men a tear, seems to have given no particular uneasiness to Pallas, who, leaving some of his people to inter the dead, coolly continued his journey. On reaching the stepp of Ischimi, he found an immense plain watered by extensive lakes, and abounding in aquatic game, among which the most remarkable was a large species of white heron. To study the manners of this bird he remained here a few days. But his mode of procuring game was somewhat different from that of Le Vaillant, who pursued the birds into the woods, observed them in their native haunts, and shot them himself. Pallas despatched a number of subaltern naturalists, who shot the game for him, and furnished him with an account of their manners; and this was what he termed studying natural history. On arriving at Omsk, he applied to the temporary governor of the town for permission to examine the collection of maps of Siberia, as divided into provinces and districts, which had been made by the late Governor Springer; but the new functionary, “dressed in a little brief authority,” had the ambition to play the politician and statesman, and, notwithstanding that he knew Pallas to be travelling for the government upon a public mission, refused him the favour he demanded without an express order from court. Nay, when he desired to depart, this new great man, with the prudence of an owl, denied him a proper passport, though without this it would be difficult for him to obtain horses on the way. Pallas, however, with the caution of a courtier, rather than with the honest indignation of a man of letters, instead of stigmatizing this gross misconduct as it deserved, merely observes, that he attributed it to the military spirit naturally inimical to the sciences.