118 The Caucasian Mountains and their Inhabitants. 



where is the justice, and whence the questionable good to 

 be deduced. 



If these two sisters, on their departure for the Bospho- 

 rus, had taken charge of that destitute child who was 

 offered to me ; and of another, still younger, and still 

 more attractive, whom I also saw in a hut in Abhasia, 

 would the lot of these little ones, with any degree of 

 probability, have been worse, more hopelessly wretched ? 

 Moreover, when free, is there not always in the human 

 soul a little star of bouyant expectations, of cheering 

 faith, that rises o'er the verge of all life's sad forebodings ? 



Again, the hopes of their families often rest on these 

 departing ones, from whom, indeed, thousands of bless- 

 ings and comforts have heretofore flowed homeward. 

 "When a daughter sets out for Stamboul with a fair pro- 

 spect of reachiug that Eldorado in safety, she leaves a ray 

 of sunshine in the house; for the parents look forward 

 with confidence to the time when they shall hear from 

 their child, and perhaps receive from her some of those 

 bags of gold we read of in oriental romances. There is 

 perhaps not a mother in all the land, from the Euxine to 

 the Caspian, who has not sometime or other had the 

 possible thought, flit through her reveries, that her daugh- 

 ter may yet be a sultana, for is not the mother of the 

 sultan a Circassian? 



If Spain is proud of having a daughter sit on the throne 

 of France, they have no less pride in saying, " Our 

 daughters have long been the queens, the very glory of 

 the Ottoman empire." There is, we all know, a halo 

 about this princely power that diffuses itself through every 

 land ; the very peaks of the Caucasian mountains have 

 not escaped its iuflueuce. 



I have said that blessings and comforts flow home- 

 ward from this exodus. The Irish afford us an illustra- 

 tion. Independent of the money and clothing, rich 



