The artillery could no longer be made available in their flying course between lines of deadly fire. Upwards of a thousand were taken prisoners. More than three times that number were left dead on the field, and the remainder owed their escape to the habits of the mountaineers, who, having seen them fairly in retreat, returned to their homes with their captives and booty.

This, which was the first great effort made to accomplish the conquest of Circassia, may be considered as characteristic of the whole. It was announced in the government gazettes as a splendid triumph! The banners of the regiments which had shared in the victory were ordered to bear honourable evidence of the part they had taken in its glories; and the general was congratulated on his exemplary chastisement of the rebels! Practical evidence, however, showed what was thought of the power of resistance possessed by these "chastised rebels." The veterans who had served in the Polish war were despatched to the scene of this dubious victory, and a force estimated by some writers to amount to 150,000 regular troops, in addition to the Cossack cavalry, was accumulated on the borders of Circassia.

By means of this overwhelming force something was effected. Forts were built, especially upon the western shore of the Caucasus, and by their means, with the co-operation of the Russian Black Sea fleet, that blockade was perfected which the owners of

the Vixen afterwards attempted to set at defiance. The effect of this sea-blockade was worse to the Circassians than all the invasions and attacks of the Russian army; its influence, moreover, on a singular practice, of universal prevalence as a national custom, cannot fail to strike the minds of most readers with surprise, in relation to a people for whom our interest is claimed as free mountaineers struggling for national and personal liberty. But this peculiar feature of Circassian nationality may fitly form the subject of a separate chapter.

CHAPTER III.

THE CIRCASSIAN WOMEN.

IT is not difficult to acquire a lively interest in the cause of a free people chivalrously contending against the armies of a great despotic power for the maintenance of their national liberty. This fine ideal, however, with its romantic interest, is considerably impaired when we learn the position which woman occupies among these brave and gallant mountaineers. In this respect at least, they present no point of resemblance to the free mountaineers of Switzerland or the Scottish Highlands; for the beauty for which the maidens of Circassia have long been so celebrated is looked upon in no other light than as the means of augmenting their market value. This fact is undoubted, that a flourishing

trade has been carried on for centuries by Circassian fathers, brothers, and other relatives, with their own daughters, sisters, and wards; and that the weapons and ammunition with which they repel their Russian assailants have most frequently been obtained by them as the exchange in what is styled their "girl trade." This the Russian blockade of the Black Sea has greatly impeded, and the apologists of Russian aggression have sometimes tried to represent the Muscovite invasion of Circassia as a grand philanthropic movement worthy of a Wilberforce or Buxton. In offering such apology as may appear admissible for this barbarous system, we must bear in remembrance the influence which Mohammedan ideas exercise on the whole social and domestic habits of the people. Among themselves marriage assumes the character of a sale; but this is common to many people, and when it is further added, that no noble or free man can dispose of his child in marriage to any Circassian inferior to himself in rank, we shall not be thought to gloss over a barbarous custom, if we remark that such a marriage does not essentially differ in its nature from those so common among ourselves, when match-making relatives look for a suitable marriage for daughters. When young maidens are sold for the foreign market, it is otherwise; yet so differently do they view this revolting custom from what we should do, that they look forward to such as the avenue to promotion, and anticipate their being taken to Constantinople

as the introduction to a scene where their fortunes may be made, and they may become the ladies of Turkish harems. Many prefer such an opportunity of trying their fortune in the world to wedding among their own people. This is especially the case among the lower ranks, as they have thereby a chance of attaining to a social position such as they could not hope for at home.

The following narrative, recorded in Mr. Bell's interesting Journal, will serve to convey some notion of the rude ideas entertained by this people relative to the rights of woman and her position in the social scale, as well as of other of their customs. Writing at Shimtoatsh, on the coast of the Black Sea, he remarks: "Although shut out from the rest of the world, we have here no lack of information as to what goes on in our immediate vicinity, for my host

-one of the wealthiest persons on the coast, and said to be worth about £6000-was wounded a few days ago, and his hamlet is incessantly thronged with large parties of his friends, who come to pay their respects to him in the guest-house, where, as usual on such occasions, he is laid in state to receive them. From fifteen to twenty persons usually remain in it all night, the greater part of which was at first spent in songs, dancing, and other merriment, for his amusement! those inside and an equally large party outside singing alternately, and sometimes in responses to each other. A ploughshare too, which lay by the divan, was now and then

smartly struck with a hammer, so that any continuance of sleep was out of the question, while a large fire blazed on the hearth to give light to this national folly, and all this beside a man with his pulse at about ninety. Some idea of the congregation of guests may be formed from the fact, that in six days there have been killed and eaten by them, five bullocks, one goat, and one lamb.

"First, in my capacity of surgeon, I got the singing and dancing (for which a party of young girls came each evening-only the serfs, however, among them performing) arrested, and then the rest of the noise gradually abated, till my patient was left to pass the whole night in repose. But I fear it will be long before these ridiculous prejudices are quite eradicated; for our host appeared to imagine he would be thought quite unreasonable, however ill he might be, to refuse to see persons who came from a distance to see him, while the guests appeared to think it equally unreasonable that they should be curtailed in the customary amusements of the occasion, which amusements they imagine to be also for his good; for the prejudice consists in the belief that the devil may do the sick man mischief if he sleep during the night. The iron ploughshare is placed at his bedside, to be struck three times with the hammer by each newly-arrived visiter, at the same time that he dips his fingers in water-in a bowl with an egg in it—and sprinkles it on the bedclothes. This is an expedient for averting the