28 CASUALS IN THE CAUCASUS 



placed, with a pathless panorama over the Black Sea 

 outspread in all its witchery before the windows. 



Yalta, in pine-clad heights, next. We did not enter 

 the harbour. No big masts rose up — a few little fishing 

 boats cruised about outside, and chased us inquisi- 

 tively as we stood out to sea for the night. 



The next morning saw us coasting along the shores 

 of lonely, forested Circassia, which streaks along the 

 Black Sea coast for some two hundred miles. At its 

 northern extremity the land lies very low, but it rises 

 to great heights on the Abkhasian frontier. 



Here, in its desolation and abandonment, is one 

 of the loveliest corners of the Caucasus, for centuries 

 the abiding-place of the courageous and warlike tribe 

 whose once prosperous villages are lost now in the 

 jungle tangle, whose prolific orchards grow but for the 

 bears. 



It cost Russia thousands of men to subdue Circassia, 

 and the inhabitants were only beaten after a stand of 

 many years. Wild, crude forest people, and dwellers 

 in the steppe country beyond, they resisted the 

 Russians because they feared to be bondmen — they 

 who had ever been free as the eagles soaring above 

 the slim sinister peaks. They fought for freedom. 

 That is the only thing worth fighting for in all the 

 world. 



It is said by many historians, and I have never seen 

 it disputed, that in the conquering of one valley 

 alone, a little rift fifteen miles long and five across, 

 defended by a thousand tribesmen, Russia lavished 

 twenty thousand lives. As in the highlands of Dag- 



