and sabres of the Circassians are the best I ever saw. We pass our time among these fine fellows very pleasantly; we teach them the Hungarian broad sword exercise, and they teach us the exercise of the lance. I have never seen a merrier or a more restless race of animals.

"The country we have passed through is, in many respects, highly interesting; deer, and every other kind of game, are in prodigious quantities; but none are so abundant as pheasants and wild ducks, one or other of which we put up at almost every step. Among the birds were many which were new to us, such as the stork, the spoonbill, the bustard, and pelicans without end. Of these last, which we had several opportunities of examining, we have seen fifteen or twenty at a time. Eagles are not so common as they are to the northward. The land on the Russian side of the river is but scantily wooded; on the southern side it rises in a magnificent theatre of oak woods, interspersed with cultivated ground and the smoke of villages, with the ridges of Caucasus above the whole. The nearest hills are by no means gigantic, but there are some white peaks which rise at a vast distance, and which proved to us that these were only the first story of the mountain.

"Of the inhabitants of this land of romance we have seen but little. At Ecatherinodar we asked repeatedly if it were not possible to cross the border to some of the villages at peace with Russia, but were told that there were no villages which could be safely visited. At that place, however, we saw some hundreds of them, who were come to barter corn for salt, and one of their chieftains, who, some years ago, had emigrated to the Russian side of the river; and here, at Taman, we have made acquaintance with a Sultan Selim Gerai, a fine young man, who, with his family and retainers, to the number of about six hundred men, had likewise thrown himself on the protection of this government; he called on us this morning with six attendants, all equipped most gallantly, in the dress and armour of his country. Such emigrations as these are by no means unfrequent; we ourselves witnessed one of them. As we stopped at a small mud fort in the wildest part of the frontier to change our horses and escort, we were told that a Circassian prince had just swam

over the Cuban, and was come to take shelter in the fort, being hard pressed by a victorious enemy. He was tall and thin, as the Circassians generally are, with a stern countenance; and though very lean, he had strong muscular limbs; his dress was plain, and he had lost his arms in the river. He had been in love, he said, with a girl whose relations asked a thousand rubles for her price, a sum which he could not pay. Unable, however, to live without her, he carried her off with an armed force from her home, and killed four of her father's retainers who attempted to resist him. His retreat to his own fortress was, however, cut off; his party put to the sword, and his mistress re-taken. The girl would, he said, (and he cried bitterly as he spoke,) be sold to the Turks, and be lost to him for ever,

"You will, of course, be curious to hear whether the Circassian women answer the expectations which every reader of eastern tales or French travels will form. I have, as yet, seen none; but by what I understand from others, there is no great difference between them and the women of the neighbouring nations. Their fashisons are quite as unnatural and unhealthy as those of more civilized countries. What rendered Circassia so celebrated for beauty was, no doubt, the circumstance of its inhabitants being great slave-brokers, and being the channel through which the Turks obtained their most beautiful females, who were, however, mostly brought from Georgia."

CHAPTER VIII.

TCHERKASK TO LEOPOLD.

Fisheries-Azoph-Tchernoimoiski Cossaks-Ferocity of an Ox

-Ecatherinodar-Church-Quarantine-Circassians-The Cuban-Cossak forts-Danger from the Circassians-Tremrook-Taman-Sultan Selim Gerai-Mire fountains-Passage to Kertch-Pelicans-Town of Kertch-Antiquities-Buzzards-Kaffa-Ruins-German Colonists-Polish Jew interpreter-Sudak-Dr. Pallas-Wine-Kaya-Lambat-Partenak―Ayou Dagh-Sugar from the Walnut Tree-Vale of Baidar-Aktiar-Batchiserai-Palace-Jew's Rock-Akmetchet-Kibitkas of the Nogay Tartars-Perekop-Character of Tartars-Women-Berislav-Steppes--Cherson-Tomb of Howard-Odessa-Duc de Richelieu-Podolia-Jews-Brody -Leopold. 1806.

TCHERKASK TO LEOPOLD.

"FROM Tcherkask we set out in a boat procured for us by the attaman, on Easter Monday. The Don is divided below the town into three principal and many smaller streams, which occupy a Delta containing about three hundred square miles; the whole space consists of nothing but morasses and swamps, which might, in many places, be drained and made good meadow land. Wherever the natural fall was sufficient to carry off the water the land seemed excellent. On such spots were generally small villages of Cossaks, who live chiefly by fishing; the Calmuk fishermen pitch their tents among the very reeds and slime. They possess few camels or horses; of the former we only saw one female with her foal. They transport their tents and families from place to place in large boats, of which one appears to be the joint stock of several families. One of them passed us, and

afforded a most curious groupe. The filth and stench of the country are terrible; the whole Delta, and all its streams and marshes are absolutely infected and poisoned with dead fish, owing to the slovenliness and carelesness of the fishermen. A Calmuk out of a prodigious haul of fish, as the salting or drying them for sale is expensive, merely selects the best, and leaves the remainder to perish and rot on the beach; if indeed it is so near his hut that the smell annoys him, and stench seldom annoys a Calmuk, he shovels the dead fish into the river. The fish on being caught are piled up in layers, with rushes between each layer, and the best are afterwards selected and salted. Large quantities of salt are annually imported from the Crimea for this purpose, as the salt produced in the Cossak country is not sufficient for the demand. Last year there was a failure of salt in the Crimea, and, by a singular coincidence, a great scarcity of fish in the Don and sea of Azoph.

"The marshes might certainly be drained with ease, and perhaps will be so, if the country ever becomes more populous; the consequent changes will be singular. The vast increase of corn and of pasture-land would be one of the least; the inhabitants must purchase this increase by a great diminution of their fishing, as the superabundance of fish is evidently occasioned by the vast extent of shallow water, the abundance of cover, shade, and nourishment afforded by the reeds, the aquatic vegetables and reptiles, and the numberless creeks and harbours of the marsh. On the other hand, they will find much greater advantage in rendering their river navigable, the waters of which are now lost in the morasses, in decreasing the unhealthiness of their climate, and, perhaps, even in adding something to the depth of the neighbouring parts of the sea of Azoph. The town of Azoph is distant from Tcherkask sixty versts by water, and something more by land; it stands on the left-hand bank of the southern branch of the Don, where the water is not more than three or four feet in depth. It is little more than a collection of half-ruined cottages, with a dilapidated fort, on which are still shown the batteries named after Peter, Menchikof, &c., and which is garrisoned by a regiment of two battalions, each of which ought to consist of 640 men. This regiment is one of

TCHERNOIMOISKI COSSAKS.

241 the number that is exclusively destined for garrisons, consisting partly of invalids and partly of boys, who are instructed and formed for soldiers. Each company has one hundred and sixty men. Some of the officers belonging to it spoke French and German well, particularly an old brigadier, Von Schwartzenberg, who had a wife and family of daughters, and who very hospitably gave us a dinner, at and after which we saw, I believe, the greater part of the society of Azoph and the neighbourhood; it was more numerous and more respectable than I should have supposed. The brigadier was looking forward with great pleasure to spending the remainder of his life in the gay and pleasant circles of Charkof, where he soon expected to go. On the green before his house were several flying-chairs and swings, the constant amusement of the Russians, and which, at this season, were in motion all day long. The circuit of the fortress is considerable, and the works large and expensive, but the situation is not very strong. There was a new Church, almost finished, in the town, built partly at the expense of the Emperor.

"We left Azoph the evening of the 15th April, and travelled day and night through the Asiatic possessions of the Don Cossaks. These possessions consist entirely of steppes, but of greater fertility than those in Europe, being covered with fine grass, and prodigious herds of cattle: we saw very few inhabitants. The country is marshy, and covered with frogs, wildducks, and geese.

"On the 16th we met some dragoons, who had been sent to buy chargers in the Cuban, where the horses are reckoned very good. They told us the ordinary price of a fine one was forty rubles. Towards dusk we passed a reed hut, with six long lances stuck in the ground before it, guarded by a sentinel in a sheep-skin, armed with a rusty carbine. The causeway and bog to which he served as protector, were the limits of the Tchernoimbiski Cossaks. These men originally were deserters and vagabonds from all nations, who had taken refuge in the marshy islands of the Dnieper. At the foundation of Cherson they were chased from their homes, and took shelter at the mouth of the Danube, still preserving their character of fishermen and VOL. I.-31