THROUGH KUBAN TAHTARY, ’ 
by skilful marksmen, who, like riflemen, station 
themselves in trees, or among rocks, in the 
passes of the mountains, to shoot the officers. 
A circumstance not worth relating, if it did 
not illustrate the manners and character of the 
different people then assembled, afforded con- 
siderable amusement to us, who were merely 
spectators upon this occasion. When the 
Pasha received the Ataman with his attendants, 
he was evidently in a state of trepidation. 
Seeing the high banks of the river covered with 
armed men, and the lances of the Cossacks 
ranged like a forest along the northern side of 
the Kuban, he could not conceal his anxiety 
and uneasiness. His own manners were re- 
markably affable and polite ; but he viewed the 
troops and officers of the Cossack army, by 
whom he was surrounded, as a set of lawless 
plunderers, for whose conduct there could be 
no long security. Doubtless he had heard as 
many tales of the barbarism of the Tchernomorshi 
as we had done before, and wished himself safe 
again upon his own divan in Anapa. If we had 
been filled with such idle fancies by the Russians 
themselves, it is but reasonable to believe that 
the Turks, who consider even the Russians as 
barbarians, must necessarily esteem the Cossacks 
as a set of ferocious banditti. The Reader may 
