JOHN

See also:

• BELL
• BELL, ALEXANDER MELVILLE (1819—1905)
• BELL, ANDREW (1753—1832)
• BELL, GEORGE JOSEPH (1770-1843)
• BELL, HENRY (1767-1830)
• BELL, HENRY GLASSFORD (1803-1874)
• BELL, JACOB (1810-1859)
• JOHN BELL (1691-178o)
• BELL, JOHN (1763-1820)
• BELL, JOHN (1797-1869)
• BELL, ROBERT (1800-1867)
• BELL, SIR CHARLES (1774—1842)

BELL (1691-178o)  , Scottish traveller, was born at Antermony in Scotland in 1691, and educated for the medical profession, in which he took the degree of M.D . In 1714 he set out for St Petersburg, where, through the introduction of a countryman, he was nominated medical attendant to Valensky, recently appointed to the Persian embassy, with whom he travelled from 1715 to 1718 . The next four years he spent in an embassy to China, passing through Siberia and the great Tatar deserts . He had scarcely rested from this last journey when he was summoned to attend Peter the Great in his perilous expedition to Derbend and the Caspian Gates . The narrative of this journey he enriched with interesting particulars of the public and private life of that remarkable' prince . In 1738 he was sent by the Russian government on a mission to'Constantinople, to which, accompanied by a single attendant who spoke Turkish, he proceeded in the midst of winter and all the horrors of war, returning in May to St Petersburg . It appears that after this he was for several years established as a merchant at Constantinople, where he married in 1746 . In the following year he retired to his estate of Antermony, where he spent the remainder of his life . He died in 1780 . His travels, published at Glasgow in 1763, were speedily translated into French, and widely circulated in Europe .