Retrospect of Domestic Literature—Voyages and Travels. 66% 
with only four pieces of cannon, which 
was all the artillery they possessed at 
that'time, they made the attack upon 
Azof, which fellinto the hands of the 
combined forces. From the circum. 
stances of this association, which first 
enabled the Cossacks to make a figure 
among the nations at war with Turkey, 
micht have been derived the erroneous 
notion, of their having emigrated 
from Poland. The Cossacks of the 
Don, according to the account which 
the best instructed among them give 
of their own people,(aud they are much 
better qualified to write ahistoty than 
any of the Russian academicians, )are a 
mixture of various nations, principally 
of Circassians, Malo-Russians, and Rus- 
sians, but also of Tartars,Poles, Greeks, 
Turks, Calmucks,. and Armenians, In 
the town of Tscherchaskoy alone, and 
in the same street, may ve seen all these 
different people at once, and each. in 
the habit peculiar to his nation. A con. 
siderable proportion of the inhabitants 
have ever been refugees, escaped from 
Turkey, Greece, or other countries, 
tothispiace. Concerning the first esta- 
blishment of their town. they relate that it 
was founded by refugees fromGreece, to 
whom thepeople ofAzof denied admission, 
and, who, in consequence, proceeding 
farther up the river,cameto this island, 
on which they made their settlement; 
giving to it aname derived from the peo. 
ple upon whose fronticr it was situat- 
ed, and with whom they afterwards in. 
termixed. The name of the town, al- 
though pronounced T7'scherchasky, is 
written Yscherchascoy, which implies 
** The small -village of Tscherchas, 
proneunced generally Tscherchess, or, 
as we write it, Circassians. Koi or Koy, 
in the Tartar language, signifies a 
small village ; and is therefore often 
the terminating syllabie in the names of 
peo in that country; as Kazinskoy, 
oscooskoy, and’ Nikitskoy. Thus 
from a small settlement of rovers, aug- 
"mented principally by intercourse with 
the neighbouring Circassians, has since 
accumulated, like a vast dvalange, the 
immense horde of the Cossacks. Be. 
fore the middle of the tenth, century, 
they had already reached the frontier 
of Poland, and began an intercourse 
with the people of that country, which 
was often atiended with an augmenta- 
‘tion of their horde, by the settlement 
of Polish emigrants among thei. 
Their first notable armament is said 
to have been in te year 948, when the 
Montuty Mas. No. 208. 
Greek emperor employed them as mer- 
cenaries in his war against the Turkss 
From their address in archery, their 
neighbours had given them the name 
of Chozars, and Chazars, under which 
latter appellation they are frequently 
mentioned by Constantine -Porphyro 
genites, and their country called Chazae 
ria. The Greek emperor, for the ser- 
vices they rendered, sent them, with 
assurances of protection, and recom- 
mendatory letters, to the Polish sove- 
reign, requesting that, in future, their 
appellation might be Cossacks and not 
Choxars.”’ 
Certain however it is, that in his ob. 
servations on the Cossacks of the Don, 
Dr. Clarke appears to have drawn a2 
contrast between them and the Rus. 
sians uncommonly striking. An im- 
partial reader cannot help suspecting 
an unfavourable bias in the mind of the 
author against the latter. 
Having devoted the fifteenth chap. 
ter to the Eurepean and Asiatic shores 
of the sea of Azof, in the sixteenth 
we accompany him through Kuban 
Tartary, to the frontier of Circassia : 
and in the seventeenth, along the frontier 
to the Cimmerian Bosphorus. The 
eighteenth chapter carries the reader 
from Taman to Caffas and the nine- 
teenth to the capita! of the Crimea. In 
this last chapter we have some inter. 
esting anecdotes of Professor Pallas. 
The twentieth extends from the capital - 
of the Crimea, to the Heracleotic 
Chersonesus: and thetwenty-first,along 
the south coast of the Crimea. The 
twenty-second chapter is occupied bya 
second excursion to the minor penin- 
sula ofthe Heracleota. In the twenty- 
third chapter, which extends by the 
isthmus of Perecop, to Nicholaef, we 
have a remarkable account of the ban. 
ditti of the Ukraine. Towards the 
close are some interesting particularg 
of the death of Howard, comimunicat- 
ed to Dr. Clarke by his two friends 
Admiral Mordvmofand Admiral Priest- 
man. The twenty-fourth chapter care 
ries the travellers from Nicholaef to 
Odessa; and in the twenty-fifth we 
have their voyage from Odessa to the 
harbour of Ineada in Turkey. The 
twenty-sixth chapter closes the first 
part of Dr. Clarke’s travels, at Con- 
siantinople. 
‘** Considering the surprising extent 
of the city and suburbs of Constanti- 
nople, the notions entertained of its 
commerce, and the figure it haw long 
4 mate 
