An invaluable primary source of ethnological information is the testimony of travelers: travel notes of merchants, reports of diplomats, etc. This article is based on the analysis of a series of such testimonies about the Romanian lands, and in particular about the territory of the modern Republic of Moldova, written by travelers from other European countries, dating back to the second half of the XVIII century, i. e. the period before the mass migration of Jews to Bessarabia. The more valuable are the relatively few references to the Jews who lived in our lands. All travelers note the extreme poverty of the population caused by war and brutal internal and external exploitation. Most of the sources analyzed in the article refer to the period of the Russian-Turkish war of 1768–1774. All the authors of these descriptions, with the exception of the notes of an anonymous Jew from 1769, were directly involved in these events. Most authors speak about the presence of Jews in towns and at fairs, or note the fact that the Jews lived in a given place, while some describe in detail, their occupations and life style, draw their psychological portrait or tell about their distinctive features. The texts also contain accounts of travelers’ adventures related to Jews, which characterize them better than the detailed descriptions.