BLACK SEA COAST. 67 



' name of skippers, machinists, tutors, and gover- 

 ' nesses, above all governesses. That would be a 

 1 grand mistake. Beautiful women don't leave Eng- 

 * land for this. Beauty is capital. Women as a race 

 1 are worth nothing in England if they have not 

 ' some special talent. One foreign language or ac- 

 ' complishment for children is no great thing, so it 

 1 only remains to go to Russia. The greater part of 

 ' Englishwomen are tall, well built, rather proud 

 1 and calm ; according to many even cold. The 

 ' colour of their hair is of never-ending variety.' 

 Such appears to be the judgment of one who evi- 

 dently believed himself a connoisseur, and had had, 

 moreover, an opportunity of studying the far-famed 

 Circassian belles in their own land. 



These Russian post-stations grow worse and 

 worse ; what may be the acme of evil at which I 

 shall arrive before I reach the Caspian, I dare not 

 fancy. They are bare of all save a wooden couch ; 

 no carpets, no provisions, no anything, except 

 the thirstiest of what Mark Twain calls ' sea-side 

 chamois.' We passed to-day a Cossack village on 

 the: border of a large lake surrounded by ' kamish ' 

 jungles, said to be the scene of a strange tragedy in 

 the Russo-Tscherkess war. ' A band of Tscherkess 

 warriors here met a party of Cossacks, who utterly 

 routed them, and the wretched natives took refuge 

 in the depths of the ' kamish ' jungles. Mere they 



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