140 
CIRCASSIANS. 
he loaded and discharged his gun six times, taking, at the same 
time, very deliberate aim in various directions. 
The country to which this prince belongs, is of considerable 
extent along the northern face of the Caucasus ; and its name 
(Circassia for Tcherkass) is familiar to every European ear. But 
it owes such celebrity rather to the long-established fame of the 
peculiar beauty of its women, than to any other circumstance, 
however note-worthy, attached to so distant a region. An un¬ 
fortunate fame, to the unhappy beauties who sent it forth ; since 
it has, for so many ages, made the successive generations of 
Circassian female youth an object of constant incursions into 
their country. The adjoining hostile tribes steal them away 
either by open violence or secret surprise, and sell them at a 
great price to the Mahometan harems of the East. But the 
Circassian nation deserves attention on other grounds than this 
romantic fate, or rather hereditary calamity, attached to the 
daughters of its people. It is one of the most independent 
nations of the Caucasus ; and consists of many tribes, of various 
appearance, and in some respects of various dignity; at least in 
their own estimation, which they tacitly proportion to their ideas 
of the relative antiquity of their seat in those renowned moun¬ 
tains. Compared with the rest, I believe the lineal descendants 
of the very ancient people of Circassia are few ; but the un¬ 
polluted stream is sufficiently distinguishable, by the unvarying- 
superiority of its offspring, over the degenerated appearance of 
the tribes, whose ancestors mingled their blood with the Tatars 
of Dchingis (Gengis, or Zingis) Khan ; the posterity of whom con¬ 
tinued the same inattention to the purity of their race, when sub¬ 
sequent events brought other stranger hordes amongst them. The 
generality, therefore, of the Circassian tribes differ little in man- 
