permit of forays on a more extensive scale. They had, in the mean while, either singly or at the head of small guerilla parties, swam or forded the Kuban at various points, scattering wild dismay through the adjacent provinces. Two regiments that had retired to Stavropol were, in consequence of these alarms, ordered back to Ekatorinadar.

We had also, though remaining ourselves in Circassia, ocular demonstration, singular as it may seem, of the panic then prevailing in Russia. Nadir, should these pages meet his eye, will doubtless recollect the night when, in company with Kaplan, we reconnoitred the fortress of Aboon, and frightened so cruelly from their propriety the unfortunate garrison, part of which (to the no small amusement of the Circassians, who hold Russians and pigs, as equally unclean, in the same abomination) made a desperate sally to save the swine which were feeding outside the gates, while the rest cannonaded us furiously from the walls. Night had overtaken us on our way home, after this reconnoissance, between Aboon and the Kuban; but the darkness, which had been unrelieved except by the moon in her first quarter shedding a feeble light behind the broken ridge of the lesser chain of the Caucasus that lay black in midnight shadow below, was

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suddenly dispelled by the light of a conflagration in front of us; while other fires, breaking out almost simultaneously to the right and left, lit up with an effect, grand as it was ghastly, the vast and dreary confines of the Muscovite.

These phenomena, startling as they were to us, occasioned no surprise to the Circassians, who told us they were precautions taken against surprise by the Russians. They were endeavouring, it seemed, to burn the reeds which served their enemies for ambush on the further bank of the Kuban; but these precautions the latter now laughed to scorn, for they knew they could be only very partially successful, exclaiming, by way of comment on them, "Let them quake, the Kiafirs! 'tis their turn to tremble now."

CHAPTER XIII.

Internal reforms among the Circassians- The National Oath-We leave the Kuban- Advance of the Yebers-Guz-Beg againNocturnal alarm.

VARIQUS were the hopes and fears that now agitated the minds of all who dwelt in the vicinity of the Kuban. On the one side was a peasantry exposed to the reprisals which their government had provoked, but could not protect them against; on the other an armed population, full of ardour and enterprise, eager to wipe off the scores of the preceding year, and waiting but the customary signal of their chiefs to be up and over the border to a man. But those on whom it thus depended to let loose their devastating fury, and who would have been warranted in so doing both by justice and policy, (since they equally demanded that

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the Russians should be visited in turn with a portion at least of the calamities they had so unsparingly inflicted,) were at this juncture influenced. by considerations, the moderation and magnanimity of which, though unappreciated by their enemies, must obtain them the sympathy of all who are not utter strangers to these sentiments. How remarkable that those whom the Russians should stigmatise as barbarians, should be the first to feel the barbarity of this exterminating warfare; and, instead of attacking their enemies at disadvantage, employ the respite afforded by the temporary retreat of their armies in the reform of internal abuses! These ameliorations they had been taught to consider as conditions on which assistance might be eventually obtained from England.

With a noble confidence, therefore, in the justice of their cause, inspiring them, on the one hand, with a proud contempt of their gigantic adversary, and, on the other, with a sanguine belief, which no discouragement could utterly extinguish, that neither England nor the Porte would ultimately abandon them, they now resolutely applied themselves to a measure which, in propitiating the latter, would, they declared, be of more avail to them than the capture of twenty forts, or any warlike expedition against

the former. The act they now contemplated embraced, among other objects, a solemn vindication of their national character, which had been studiously misrepresented and vilified.

It had been the view and policy of Russia, not only to sever the ties which had connected the Circassians with their Mussulman brethren, by investing that country with their armies and fleets, but to cut them off from the sympathies of the whole world, by invariably representing them as lawless hordes of barbarians. Nothing, however, could be more unfair than such statements; for though it must be admitted that the laws and institutes acknowledged by these mountaineers did not formerly interdict acts of spoliation between members of different tribes and provinces, yet the observances which they did prescribe, and which certainly sufficed for the general security of life and property, were perhaps more tenaciously adhered to than the laws are in any other country. I have heard of no instance of breach of faith when once plighted; and as to their respect for treaties, Russia herself must be a reluctant witness in their favour, and blush at the contrast afforded to it by its own perfidy. All, then, that was wanting, was the abandonment of usages which gave their enemies any colour for excluding them from the pale of civi