VOYAGE AND ARRIVAL 31 



late in coming, and great sickness broke out among 

 the waiting myriads. When at last the overdue ships 

 did put in an appearance, the accommodation was 

 hideously inadequate, and the hardy mountaineers, 

 accustomed to the fresh air of their slopes and forests, 

 packed hke sardines in unwholesome holds, died in 

 hundreds. Some few effected a landing at Tuapse, 

 only to succumb miserably from hunger and exposure. 

 The remainder, reaching Anatolia, found that Turkish 

 hospitality prepared no welcome for the vagrant farers, 

 who perforce camped anyhow on the seashore in 

 terrible weather. 



There is a story of a grand old chieftain, who, rather 

 than die by inches of starvation, or by a drive of his 

 own kinjal (dagger), mounted his horse and rode, 

 calling on the remains of his once mighty clan to 

 follow him, into the Euxine. Tradition says he rides 

 still, and on a wild night, as the sea reins back her 

 white-maned steeds, one whiter than all the rest leads 

 the way, and at the bridle a phantom figure forges on- 

 wards, ever onwards to Circassia. 



In this hideous debacle two-thirds of the great 

 Circassian peoples perished, leaving as representative 

 of the nation the few hardy mountaineers scattered 

 about the Kouban steppes and the small number of 

 emigrants who survived the sturm und drang of the 

 move. 



Desolate Circassia, her beauty no longer for her own 

 people, a hot-bed of fever for all aliens, has not 

 attracted the settler to any appreciable extent. The 

 Russian peasant is not of the stuff of which pioneers 



