CHAPTER V.

Opening of the campaign-The gathering of the Circassians to oppose their invaders-Grape shot-The medjilis, or national council-Meeting with Mr. Bell.

THE konag where we passed the night was a collection of a dozen or so of cottages, which we might call a village, but for the circumstance of their being tenanted by one family, or rather, the different branches of that family, to the second and third generations, all flourishing together, and connected with the same parent stem. In the western provinces, I have never met with different families. residing in the same locality; and I believe this isolation is owing to the mountainous and broken character of the country itself fostering that jealous spirit of independence which makes every man

prefer being the monarch of his own little fen, rather than the member of a mutually-dependent community.

In the absence of similar causes, in Zadooz and Danigoc, provinces composed entirely of plains, large villages are to be found; a misfortune in one respect, that they are in greater alarm of the Russian armies, which can thus fall on so many victims "at one fell swoop." We were welcomed and waited upon by the patriarch of this little hamlet, in person, to whom the duties of hospitality seemed to give new life and spirit. Indeed, it was a most pleasing sight to see him bustling beneath his burden of fourscore in the discharge of them. They were poor people in this konag, we were told, yet was the capacious bowl of boza duly presented to us; nor, of less capacity, was the reservoir of broth, or the boiled sheep, cut and ranged in enormous pieces on the fortifications of pasta aforesaid, wanting to grace our visit. But war, and the rumours of war, were now engaging the attention of the whole population.

It seemed to have begun in good earnest, and Williammenoff, at the head of 10,000 men, combining his movement, it appeared, with the descent on the coast, had crossed the Kuban, and was already at blows with the Circassians. Stragglers from the scene of action, dispersing for the night.

in the neighbouring hamlets, now dropped in one after the other; and eager questions, various and confused answers, were as usual put and given in every direction. Mixed with the lugubrious " Wai, wai, wai!" sounding the knell of some favourite chieftain, in one corner, might be heard the cheerful chirrup of " IIai, hai!" exulting in the feats of a more fortunate one in another. The Russians, it was reported, had this time brought colonists with them, to settle in the vicinity of Aboon, in the same manner as they had done at Anapa,-news that proved by no means agreeable. "The dirty infidels,” said the Hadji, "are coming upon us pell mell, themselves, their families, and their pigs. Allah! Allah! Allah!"

Determined to join Mr. Bell and the chiefs at Adhencum that same day, we were stirring early that morning, and found the whole establishment in a bustle; some were preparing to accompany us to the Medjilis, or assembly of the nation, others "borne to battle strife." While we were there, a string of about a dozen of the latter, of which some were lads of not more than fourteen or fifteen, entered the farm-yard, where they unslung and deposited their rifles much in the same way that we see a troop of itinerant haymakers come and lay down their scythes in England. Their harvest was of a different kind, but their look of

quiet determination promised that their four or five charges of powder, (for the stock in many of their hassirs was no greater,) and which they had come, it seemed, some of them many leagues to burn against the enemy, would be laid out to the very best advantage.

I now began to have a clearer idea of this warfare, which, within a few years, had entirely changed its character. Formerly, when confined to border hostilities between the Circassians and the Tchernamortsy Cossacks, it consisted of encounters of cavalry on the plain, in which the latter, being worse mounted and armed, and much less expert than their adversaries, got so roughly handled that their numbers were very much thinned, and they were in consequence so greatly discouraged and demoralized, that the former, who despised them, would engage and beat their parties with almost any odds in their favour.

Russia at length adopted another system. Leaving the Tchernamortsies to act on the defensive, and to man the chain of posts along the Kuban, and bringing with her army not more than a thousand of them, for the protection of its flanks, she thenceforward took the field with cannon and infantry; and the Circassians, after repeated attempts to break the Russian squares, in which the best

and bravest of the warriors fell victims to their own rashness, and the contempt they had imbibed for the enemy in their conflicts with the Tchernamortsies, began on their side to change their opinions and their tactics. On the approach of the Russians, part of them would set fire to their houses and retreat precipitately with their families and cattle to the mountains, while the rest, gathering from all sides at the report of the first gun, would hover about them in flying parties, and infest them in front, rear, and flank, as the ground or occasion served. Against such a mode of annoyance, particularly in the defiles, there was no remedy; indeed, Williammenoff himself candidly admitted it to some of the natives, in a parley he was holding with them.

"Meet us fairly," said the general, " and we will beat you in any number; but now, after harassing and provoking us like a set of hornets, when we seek to make our acknowledgments, you are no more to be found," said he, laughing, and throwing a handful of gunpowder in the air, "than these grains in the grass."

There was one innovation, however, in Muscovite warfare, which I found they by no means approved of, and that was grape-shot. Its effects they described as something altogether awful, and which nobody who had not seen could form an idea of.