114 The Caucasian 31ountains and their Inhabitants. 



hands of such as are able to take care of them. If she 

 remains here she must many some poor boatman as /did, 

 and her whole life will be one long wail for bread, and 

 the ordinary comforts of life. Toil, toil, will be the 

 burden of her morning, her mid-day, and her evening 

 song; and at night, weary as she may be, she must find 

 her rest on these hard boards, such as you see around us." 



"When in memory I wander again in that far-off land, 

 I often think of that poor woman, willing, in her deep 

 love and tenderness to part with her child, and perhaps 

 never more gaze on its delicate face, all mother in its 

 classic lineaments, its gentle expression, its tearful hope ; 

 never more, perchance, even hteat a word of her first-born ; 

 whether in sunshine, in soft chaste gladness, she danced 

 away the hours of golden-slippered existence, or in the 

 depth of degradation, in wretchedness of soul, she turned 

 her garments of simplicity and faith into rags of remorse, 

 and lay down in the early grave of the most unfortunate. 



Perhaps it would be unmanly in me to say that my 

 eyes have more than once been filled with tears when 

 contemplating the sorrowful life of this unique, this 

 strange people ; and when I have thought of their limited 

 means for education and enjoyment, or rather their lack 

 of all means, of every resource, for successful intellectual 

 culture, I have turned with a grateful heart, and perhaps, 

 some pardonable pride, to our own glorious institutions. 



It is not to be supposed that you will appreciate this 

 as I do, for you all may not have seen a whole nation 

 slumbering in the darkness of a rayless, pitiable ignorance. 

 You, perhaps, have never thought of comparing our varied 

 means of enjoyment with those of the untutored of whom 

 I have been speaking. It is, indeed, like comparing the dead 

 with the living, the fertile summer with sterile winter. 

 We revel in the splendors of an ideal garniture, which from 



