TO AZOF AND TAGANROG. 
409 
roads, off that place. The Governor, both of chap. 
r XIV. 
Azof and of Taganrog, resides at Rastof; al- — 
though those places have each their superior 
resident officer, who is called Commandant. 
Rastof is garrisoned by Russian troops. We 
found it in a deplorable state of neglect. The 
Cossacks of the Don claim the territory upon 
which the fort is built, as well as of the land 
where the Armenian settlements in its vicinity 
are founded. We could learn no other reason 
for this, than that these Cossacks have the care 
of conducting the mail. Indeed, the generality 
of them seemed to consider their land as limited 
by a boundary between Axay and Nakhtshivan. 
In an empire, so little settled as that of 
Russia, whose southern frontier is continually 
advancing, by encroachments daily made upon 
the territories of other nations, the limits of 
any particular province are not likely to con- 
tinue long the same. Other travellers may pos- 
sibly arrive, and find the whole race of Don 
Cossacks moved, and planted upon the sides of 
Caucasus : and those of the Black Sea, the 
Tcher nomor ski, so lately carried from the Dnieper 
to the banks of the Kuban, may then be found 
repelling the incursions of the Persians and 
the Afghans, upon the southern shores of the 
Caspian. 
i 
