11LACK SEA COAST. 69 



officers, from which one would infer that regimental 

 messes are not in vogue in Russia. 



In the morning after my arrival at Ekateri- 

 nodar I was up betimes, and, with a friend whose 

 acquaintance I had made on my first visit, pro- 

 ceeded to the fair outside the town to purchase the 

 indispensable bourka. Thanks to his exertions, I 

 was, in little more than an hour, the possessor of a 

 good bourka, sheepskin shouba and cap, all pur- 

 chased for about 4/. Attired in the costume of the 

 country, and speaking the language fluently, if not 

 well, I am less likely to attract the attention of the 

 natives, who, I am told, being for the most part 

 Mussulmen, are bitterly set against the English 

 just now, ascribing, as they do, the misfortunes of 

 the Turkish Empire to our cold friendship, for which 

 they have, I fear, a harder name. 



Ekaterinodar must be a prospering town, for I 

 am told that seven years ago there were only live 

 stone houses in the place, and now there are up- 

 wards of a thousand. The old houses were built 

 of reeds washed over with a kind of cement. The 

 fever, too, I arn told, is on the wane, and, indeed, 

 it had need to be, for some few years ago there was 

 no worse fever den in the Caucasus. Pmt now as 

 the cart-tracks through the town begin to look a 

 little like streets (though still of the roughest), with 

 every hereand there in the most fashionable quarters 

 a hundred yards of uneven pavement, and, by the 



