388 TRAVEL, ADVENTURE, AND SPORT. 



Here the sight of dismantled walls, and tottering 

 towers, and heaps of rubbish, gave rise, not to feel- 

 ings of melancholy, but of satisfaction and of triumph ; 

 of satisfaction that a noble and free-hearted people 

 should be relieved of the presence of foreign invaders ; 

 and of triumph, that this result had been due entirely 

 to our navy. It was pleasant, then, to see Circassians 

 cultivating gardens which formerly supplied their 

 enemies with vegetables, and building their cottages 

 within gunshot of those loopholed walls, then so 

 harmless ; and melancholy is it now to think that 

 Russian cannon will soon again fill up the empty 

 embrasures, and Russian soldiers reconstract and re- 

 occupy the ruined and deserted barracks; that the 

 gardens will again be abandoned by their rightful 

 owners, and their cottages destroyed. The effect of 

 any clause in the late treaty preventing the recon- 

 struction of these forts, is more important than people 

 in this country have been disposed to allow. It has 

 been contended that the Circassians had no claim to 

 our sympathies on the score of co-operation, and that 

 therefore any stipulation in their favour was uncalled 

 for. In the first place, it is easy to show that they 

 co-operated with us whenever they were asked, and 

 could do so ; and, in the second, it is not because the 

 Circassians deserve their independence that we should 

 endeavour to secure it for them, any more than it 

 was the purity of the Sultan's government which 

 induced us to undertake a war which had for its 



