TRAVELS IN CI11CASSIA. 399 



the protection of Russia, at the same time professing 

 himself a Christian convert. From that moment 

 Russia never relinquished the hold which she was 

 thus enabled to secure ; and at the close of that 

 war Avith Turkey which terminated in the treaty of 

 Yassy, she acquired Abkhasia, together with the 

 neighbouring provinces to the south. Shortly after- 

 wards Russian troops were quartered at Souchoum 

 Kaleh and other forts on the coast, and the princes of 

 Abkhasia became Muscovite vassals. Their subjects, 

 however, were by no means disposed to concur in 

 this transfer of allegiance, and the Mahometan portion 

 of the population have steadily refused to recognise 

 the sovereignty of their new masters. The Christians, 

 indeed, remain docile subjects of their prince. They 

 remember with abhorrence the barbarities of their 

 Turkish rulers, and even exaggerate those atrocities 

 which unfortunately but too often characterised their 

 dominion. The population of the north and interior, 

 on the other hand, have conceived an inveterate hatred 

 to the Russians, enhanced no doubt by the perpetual 

 struggle with them in which they have been engaged, 

 while they have forgotten the oppression of their 

 former masters, from whom they doubtless suffered 

 less than their Christian compatriots ; and regarding 

 them only as co-religionists, they hailed with joy the 

 arrival of a Turkish Pasha, shortly after the evacua- 

 tion of Souchoum Kaleh, as an earnest of that change 

 from the Christian to the Mahometan rule which they 



