TO NICHOLAEF. 
323 
The roads leading from the Crimea towards chap. 
vni - 
the north of Russia are supposed to be infested > , — 
with bands of desperate robbers, who inhabit 
the extensive deserts lying to the north of Ukra,nt - 
Peninsula. Stories of this kind rarely amount 
to more than idle reports. If credit be given 
to all that is related concerning the danger of 
this route, it would be madness to risk 
the journey; but few well-attested instances 
have occurred, of any interruption or hazard 
whatsoever. Perhaps, before the Crimea be- 
came subject to Russia, there was more real 
foundation for alarm ; because the country, 
where the banditti are said to dwell, then 
constituted the frontier of Little Tahtary; and, 
in all parts of the globe, frontiers are most liable 
to evils of this description, from the facility of 
escape thereby offered to the plunderer or to 
the assassin. From the author’s own experience 
in almost every part of Europe, after all the 
tales he has heard of the danger of traversing 
this or that country, he can mention no place 
so full of peril as the environs of London ; where 
there are many persons passing at all hours of 
the day and night with perfect indifference, who 
Would shrink from the thoughts of an expedition 
across the deserts of Nagay, or the territory 
°f the Don Cossacks. The Nagay Tahlars, from 
their nomade life, are a wilder and more savage 
VOL. IT. 
Y 
