Ysbrand, Eberard Ides

, a celebrated traveller, was a native of Gluckstad in Holstem, a man of ingenuity, activity, and enterprize, whose curiosity after voyages and discoveries led him to Moscow about the beginning of the reign of the czars John and Peter Alexiewitz. The latter, better known by the name of Peter the Great, discovered the talents of Ysbraad, took him into his service, and employed him on some regulations which he was about to form, and which laid the foundation for the commercial prosperity of Russia. Peter having afterwards a dispute with the | emperor of China, respecting certain boundaries, considered Ysbrand as a very proper person to conduct a negociation, and therefore sent him to China, invested with the character of ambassador. He set off in March 1692, and returned in Jan. 1695, and afterwards published an account of his voyage, at Amsterdam in 169y, reprinted in 1704 and 1710. An English translation was published at London in 1704, 4to, with maps and plates, and is deemed a work of great curiosity and considerable value. It has also been translated into other languages. We have no farther notice of the author than that he was living in 1700. ¹