316 TEAVEL, ADVENTURE, AND SPORT. 



of these I had already visited. A large wooden 

 mansion it was, with elaborately carved overhanging 

 eaves, and gaunt unfurnished rooms, looking doubly 

 desolate in the absence of the owner, \vith nothing 

 but a couch in one, and two or three rickety chairs 

 and a table in another, and a heap of suspicious-look- 

 ing bedding piled in a corner of a third, and a quan- 

 tity of noble antlers, the spoils of many a hard day's 

 chase in the mountains, ornamenting a fourth. Prince 

 Michael had often asked me to pay him a visit, and I 

 was not sorry to find that he was aAvay from home on 

 this occasion, as it involved an expedition to his 

 northern residence at Souksou, and an opportunity 

 would thus be afforded of visiting a new part of his 

 territory. Meantime Abkhasia was becoming a place 

 of considerable resort. On my first arrival I had 

 found it an unvisited and almost unknown country ; 

 now English and Turkish men-of-war lay at anchor in 

 the beautiful bay of Souchoum, and English travellers 

 and Turkish soldiers encountered one another in its 

 formerly deserted streets. It was with a party of 

 the former that, in the beginning of last October, I 

 undertook the expedition to Souksou, with a view of 

 afterwards extending our wanderings, and penetrating, 

 as far as time and circumstances would permit, into 

 some of the hitherto totally unknown and unexplored 

 valleys of Circassia. 



Souksou is situated at a distance of about five 

 miles in the interior, and we proceeded in two men- 



