them was, that they should be put as common soldiers among the regiments of the Caucasus, Orenburg, and Siberia. Shocking was the sight of the two young Counts Tyskiewicz, almost children; at every step they sunk under the load of their heavy chains; they stretched their hands for a little charity, in order that they might buy themselves chains of less weight, which their heartless keepers refused them.

"At Koupka, a village in the government of Mohilew, we saw about one hundred soldiers, all emaciated from sufferings and fatigue, without arms and on crutches, on their route to Siberia.

"At Choracewicze we met a detachment of between fifty and sixty soldiers in chains, on their way to Siberia. They belonged to those who, confiding in the amnesty promised by the Czar, and guaranteed by the King of Prussia, resolved to return to Poland (from Prussia). Many of them began to cry when they approached us; others tried to sing their national hymn, Poland, Poland is not yet lost.' Others exclaimed to us, 'Return, return to our dear mother (their country); we hope still once to return again.' On the other side of this town we met M. Warcynski, the marshal of Osmiand (the same town where the Kirgises murdered in a church four hundred wives, children, and old men). He was on a waggon with post-horses, under the guard of gendarmes; his hands and feet were chained to an iron ring round the body, which was fastened to another round the neck; his long beard flowed down to his breast-the head

was shaved in the form of a cross- -his coat half black and half white. He is condemned to hard labour for life.

"Bobruysk is a fortress in the government of Minsk. Six hundred soldiers of the fourth regiment of the line, of the Kuzah chasseurs, and others, are here working on the fortifications. They go in bands of ten, chained together to a long iron pole; the chains are only taken off during the hours of labour. There is also a noble Lithuanian of the name of Zaba pining here in a dungeon, and awaiting his sentence. He is accused of having intended to deliver over the fortress to the insurgents. When he was

arrested, he had a list of the names of the patriots in his pocket. He tried to swallow the paper down. The sbirri tore his teeth open, lacerated the palate, and drew forth from his throat some few pieces of the paper."

"The fate of those condemned to the highest degree of punishment is one of perhaps unmitigated misery -nothing can be more wretched than their condition. From the first hour after their arrival, they are engaged in the most laborious and unwholesome toils —in the freezing depths of the mine, or amid the suffocating vapours of the places where unhealthy chemical processes is carried on-shut up from the light of day, the breath of heaven, the sympathy of their kind. They not only lose goods and rank, but, by a refinement in cruelty, they lose their very names, that which marked them to be Christians, and

by which they were known among men, is taken away. Christian and family appellations are alike obliterated, and a number given in their stead, by which they are always called by the driver when he has occasion to address them.".

Such are the terrible features resulting from that ambitious policy which has blotted out Poland from the map of Europe, and made it a crime for her children even to sigh after those old national institutions which, all imperfect as they were, contained in them the elements from which an enlightened people might have worked out a well-organized system, extending freedom to the serf as well as to the noble, and making of Poland either a constitutional mon archy or a free republic.

Part III-Circassia and its People.

CHAPTER I.

THE CAUCASUS.

We

THE previous pages have furnished some materials whereby to judge of the rapid rise and the present power of the Russian empire, as well as of the character of its nobles, its officials, and its serfs. shall now pass from the centre to the remote circumference of this vast empire, and behold it in its struggles for extended dominion and increasing power. The region of the Caucasus, which has been celebrated from the remotest times, and rendered interesting by many diversified associations, has received a new source of attraction in recent years as the arena of a struggle in which the Russian Emperor, with all the power of his vast dominion, has been foiled by a hardy race of free mountaineers.

In order fully to appreciate the nature of the Circassian wars, and to realize a distinct view of the scene where this modern struggle for liberty is now carried on, it is desirable that we should have some idea of the grand natural features of the country, as

well as of the character and attributes of the people by whom the unequal contest is waged.

The great mountain range of the Caucasus may be practically designated as one of the most important barriers between Europe and Asia. By this chain of heights the passage between the Euxine and the Caspian Seas is guarded as by a sleepless host of invincible sentries, and its numerous vales and alpine heights form the natural fastnesses for a race of mountaineers, where they may maintain the character for indomitable endurance which has marked the highlander of every age and country. The Caucasian chain runs from the Black Sea in a southeastern direction to the shores of the Caspian Sea; commencing near Anapa, a Russian settlement on the Euxine shore nearly opposite to the Crimea, and extending a distance of six hundred and ninety miles in a direct line, or fully eight hundred miles in its actual windings, to Baku on the Caspian Sea. The spread of this great mountain range towards the north is pretty clearly defined by the courses of the rivers Kuban and Terek; the former of which flows along their bases westward to the Euxine, and the latter eastward to the Caspian Sea. The Kuban forms the boundary of Russia Proper, its lower branch separating the southern provinces of Russia from the Caucasian territory. The political boundary of the Caucasian territory on the south is the ancient kingdom of Georgia, now a province of Russia. It is thus placed between two portions of that gigan