only been able to pull the trigger, it most certainly would have been mine. Suddenly the animal raised its head, stretched forth its neck towards the opposite bank, inspired the air, sent forth the sound of danger, and hurried back to cover. I was too familiar with the habits of wild animals not to understand that all this pantomime meant that something was approaching on the other side of the river.

I turned towards Bageniok. "Sminno," he said this time. I did not know the word, but I understood by his gestures that I was not to move, but to make myself as scarce as possible behind my bush. So I obeyed him. As to the Cossack, he glided away like a snake down the bank of the river, and, consequently, away from myself and the rest of the party. I followed him with my eyes as long as I could. When I lost sight of him, I began to examine into what was going on on the other side of the Axai. There, at the same moment that I made out the sounds of a horse galloping, I also distinguished in the obscurity a larger group than could have belonged to a single horseman. This group kept nearing me, without my being the more able to make it out.

What I understood, however, by the beating of my heart, more than by the testimony of my eyes, was that an enemy was before us. I took a look in the direction of Ignacieff; no one was stirring. One would have thought that the bank of the river was deserted. I then looked towards Bageniok; he had disappeared long ago. I then carried my eyes back again to the other side of the river, and waited.

The horseman had reached the banks of the Axai. His profile was towards me, so that I could see that he dragged a person behind him, attached to the tail of his horse. It was a male or female prisoner. At the very moment that he urged his horse into the river, and that the person behind had to follow, a piteous cry was heard. It was that of a woman. The whole group was then immersed in the stream, not above two hundred paces below where I lay.

What was I to do?

As I addressed this query to myself, the bank of the river was suddenly lit up, and the explosion of a rifle followed. The horse beat the water convulsively with its feet, and the whole group disappeared in the tempest thus stirred up in the middle of the river. At the same time a second cry of distress, like the first, and uttered by the same voice, was heard.

I could stand it no longer, but, getting up, I hurried away in the direction of the drama that was now being enacted. In the midst of the confusion that still agitated the waters, another flash illumined the darkness-another shot had been fired. This was followed a moment afterwards by a third, and then I heard the sound of a person jumping into the river; I saw something like a shadow making its way towards the middle of the river; I heard shouts and curses, mingled with cries of distress; and then, all of a sudden, noise and movement alike ceased.

I looked around me; my companions had joined me, and stood around, motionless as myself. We then saw something making towards us, which it was impossible to recognise in the obscurity, but which gradually became more and more distinct. When the group had arrived within ten paces of us we distinguished and we understood.

The moving party was Bageniok; his kandjar was between his teeth; with his right arm he supported a female, who had fainted, but who had not let go a child she held in her arms; and with his left he held by the lock of hair that remained at the top of the cranium the head of a Tchetchen, dropping blood and

water.

He threw the head on the green sward, and then, laying down the woman and child more cautiously, he said, in a voice in which not the slightest emotion betrayed itself:

"Now, friends, who has got a drop of vodka ?"

Do not imagine that it was for himself that he asked for the brandy. It was for the woman and child.

Two hours afterwards we were in Kasafiourta, bringing back the woman and the child, perfectly restored to life, in triumph. But I still ask myself some

times if one has a right to place oneself in ambuscade to kill a man as one would do a stag or a wild boar?

The next day the party left Kasafiourta with an escort, in company with Colonel Cogniard, a host of young officers, and fifty men, to pay a visit to the Tartar prince Ali-Sultan. Thence they proceeded to Tchiriourth, where, initiated in the profuseness of Russian hospitality and the value of a European if not a cosmopolitan fame, M. Dumas proceeded, without introduction, at once to the mansion of Prince Dundukoff Korsakoff, colonel of the regiment of Nijnei Novgorod Dragoons, and one of the most distinguished corps in all the Russias. Beyond this point the frontier of the Lesghian territory is attained. Stopping on the way to explore a moving mountain of sand, near which was the Tartar encampment of Unter Kalah, they experienced here, for the first time, the ferocity of the nomades' dogs, familiar to all Eastern travellers who have encamped beyond the precincts of towns and villages. The attack appears to have discomposed M. Dumas and his friend Moynet considerably, for, had they continued to retreat, he asserts that they had been infallibly devoured! At a station beyond was a grove with twentyfive crosses. These commemorated the same number of Russian soldiers who went to sleep there, and whom the Tchetchenses never allowed to wake up again. In the same evil neighbourhood they had to put up at a Cossack post-house, a mere hut, whitewashed outside, and full inside of vermin of all descriptions. The arrival of a European with blood-vessels more easily attained than such as are protected by a Tartar or even a Muscovite hide, is a Shrove Tuesday, a general festival, with such pertinacious evils. Neither was there anything to eat, save the cock that acted as timekeeper to the post. This cock was not like one whose history is told in connexion with the Cossack post of Schoukovaia, and who would not sound his matins because he had no hens. The cock sacrificed on this occasion, although compared with the "fameux coq vierge dont parle Brillat Savarin," was a regular chanticleer, thereby casting doubts upon M. Dumas's previous assertion, hazarded to the effect that "les coqs et les ténors n'ont aucun rapport entre eux." The cock was replaced by another and four hens at Temir Khan-the "Iron Khan" (pity M. Dumas was no Orientalist, for some of these names are alike significant and suggestive), a marshy station, near which the tarentasse got stuck in the mud, and Moynet had a return of ague, and which has been besieged and sacked by Schamyl and his gallant lieutenant Hajji Murad. Our travellers contemplated, with mingled surprise and admiration, several large encampments of Tartars in this part of the country. M. Dumas, transporting a word from Algeria to the Caucasus, calls them "aouls," but the Tartars call them "ordu." One of the most picturesque of these was a mountain fortress inhabited by the Champkal Tarkovsky, another was the village of Helly, perched on a hill between two mountains, and with two charming wooded valleys. This latter pretty village was, however, disturbed by Lesghian depredators. The Cossacks had gone out in pursuit of some of these mountaineer bandits at the very time when the travellers arrived there, and they hastened after them, on the road to Karabadakent. The tarentasse had to be driven right across country. They soon fell in with two parties, the first of which was loaded with heads and ears, the other accompanied the wounded. They then pursued their way to the ravine of Zillag-Kaka, where the combat had taken

21

12

place. It presented a horrid sight, but M. Dumas enriched his historical collection of arms with a real Lesghian kandjar-one that had seen

service.

Our party were received and entertained at Bouinaky by Prince Bagration, a descendant of the ancient kings of Georgia. This gallant and most hospitable prince insisted upon their retracing their steps to a certain distance to visit the ravine of Karany. It was a terrible and yet a sublime scene, a ravine with cliffs some seven thousand feet perpendicular. The valley below (and it made them giddy to look at it) was watered by two Koa Sus. Beyond was the village of Guimry, with its orchards, whose fruit the Russians have once, and only once, tasted. It is the birthplace of Schamyl. Little columns of smoke indicated the ates of other mountain fastnesses, among which were Akoulgo, where Djemel Eddin, the son of Schamyl, was made prisoner, and in the far distance was the country of the Tuschins, a Christian race, at war with the Caucasians. The same evening M. Dumas was unanimously elected an honorary member of Prince Bagration's regiment of "Indigenous Mountaineers," not Lesghians or Tchetchenses, but "des pauvres diables qui ont fait une peau. Lisez qui ont troué. une peau." The prince, whose Georgian hospitality surpassed even that of the Russians, had a uniform made at the same time for his guest by the regimental tailor, a circumstance which M. Dumas appears to forget, when, arrived at Tiflis, he describes himself as denuded of all garments in which to present himself in fashionable society, and as clipped by a barber so closely, that Moynet declared that he would do to exhibit at Constantinople as a new species of seal fished up from the Caspian-a comparison the truth of which is admitted by our great romancer, but for which he comforts himself by asserting that all men have a latent likeness to some member or other of the animal kingdom,-a suggestion-if there is anything new in it-the priority of which we are in a position to dispute even with so eminent a man as M. Dumas.

They were now truly in a region of picturesqueness: snow-clad mountains on the one hand; rich valleys, clad in their garments of summer green, around; the steppe beyond, and the blue Caspian in the distance, like a prolongation of the desert. Prince Bagration acted as guide, and, under such excellent protection, they were not long in reaching the great pelasgic wall, which, with the exception of a massive gateway, and the inevitable Oriental accompaniments of a fountain and a cemetery, bars the passage from the mountains to the sea at Derbendthe pass par excellence-for there are many other celebrated Derbends in the East, but none more so than this, which is one of the boundaries of Europe and Asia. Beyond the wall was the town, with mosques and bazaars side by side with European barracks and edifices. Tartars, Teherkessians, Georgians, Persians, and Armenians jostling Muscovite and Cossack rulers. The same reception which everywhere awaited M. Dumas was reserved for him at this remote corner of the world. The inhabitants of Derbend, or, at all events, a portion of them, had read the illustrious poet and romancer's works in the Russian language, and they waited upon him in a deputation to assure him that his presence in Derbend would never be forgotten, as they hoped he also would not forget that old site of the Scythians. This was truly a pleasing, as it was a genuine and rare, triumph of letters!

From Derbend to Baku, the road coasting the Caspian, there is no danger, yet the usual escort had to be provided, and the usual preparations for defence were made. There are rude mountain torrents to cross, villages of Jews, descendants of the captives of Senacherib, Tartar encampments, caravanserais that date from the time of Shah Abbas, and the long headland of Apcheron, on the way. The route was not indeed wanting in the variety, and the snow-clad summits of the Caucasus were always in the rear.

There are two Bakus as there are two Derbends, a black Baku (Kara Baku) and a white Baku (Ak Baku), the dark portion being tenanted by Orientals, the new and lighter portion by Europeans. Twenty-six versts from Baku are the celebrated burning fountains of naphtha (Artesh Gah), with a temple served by Parsees, the fire-worshippers of old. The sea gives off incandescent gases also in parts, and we have a long description of the curious and beautiful effects produced by their illumination. Within the town there are the fortifications, the bazaars, the mosques and churches, the Maiden's Tower, with a legend, and the foot of which is bathed by the waters of the Caspian, the palace of the khans, and the Wolf's Gate, to see.

At Baku the Caspian was left behind, the road lying to the westward by Schoumaka and Nouka to Tiflis. The road was also no longer so safe; it was more rugged and mountainous, and was infested by Lesghians. Schoumaka itself, the olden capital of Shirvan, is depopulated by fevers, earthquakes, and revolutions. There was not much to be seen in this ill-fated town, but they had a pleasant evening at a wealthy Tartar's house-Mahmud Bey by name-who treated them to a Persian supper and a "soirée de bayadères." Unfortunately, the bayadères of Schoumaka, once so celebrated, were like the Parsees of the fire-temple of Baku, reduced to three-two females and a boy!

M. Dumas obtained, however, at this place, some curious information regarding Schamyl, from a Russian officer who had been his prisoner. He is described as a man about sixty years of age, tall, with a mild but imposing look. He is pale, with black eyebrows, apparently listless eyes, but easily roused like the lion's, and a red beard. He wears a cloak of green or white Lesghian cloth, and a turban of white muslin upon a red papak, with a golden tassel. In winter he wears a cloak of crimson cloth lined with a black sheepskin. He is a perfect horseman, and extremely spare in his diet-seldom partaking of meat. He has two wives, Zaidée and Chouanette. Zaidée is the youngest and the pet. Chouanette is thirty-six years of age. She was the daughter of a rich Armenian of Masdok. Some twenty years ago Schamyl captured the city and took the fair Anna, with other prisoners, to Dargo. Anna became a Mussulman, married Schamyl, and was called Chouanette. She is the guardian angel of Schamyl's Christian prisoners, and the Princesses Tchavtchavadze and Orbeliani, who were made captives to obtain the release of Djemel Eddin, were infinitely indebted to her. Dargo has since been burnt by Woronzoff, and Schamyl has had to withdraw to Veden. The patriarch of the Caucasus had two other wives, Aminette, the prettiest renvoyé pour cause de sterilité, but, more probably, by the jealousy of Zaidée and Chouanette-and the mother of Djemel Eddin, who died of grief when her son was made prisoner by the Russians, at the siege of Akoulgo, in 1839.

189

ARMES DE PRÉCISION.

THE booming of rifled great guns and the sharp ping of Minié muskets have ceased for a while. Fatigue and heat, thirst and putrid fevers, wounds and death, have combined, with pressure from without, to stay the arm of the two great belligerent powers, but it is still worth while to contemplate for a moment those weapons so concisely described by the Emperor of the French at the onset of the war as armes de précision," and the introduction of which have brought about almost a revolution in military tactics and strategy, and that not only for the wonderful results produced, but as a lesson-and that a most important one, too-for the future.

Certain it is that the progress in the state of gunnery and small arms, combined with that of steam navigation, has rendered it necessary to reconsider not only naval and military general engagements, but also the principle of attack and defence of fortified places, as also of coasts and harbours.

The first and most prominent result will be, that the greatly increased power of ordnance, in length of range, penetration, and accuracy of fire, will give much more advantage to the attack of fortresses and fortified posts than to their defence. Towers, old castles, and escarp walls in general, that are exposed to view, will be readily ruined from greater distances. Although the new shot and shells are not adapted to afford the regular effects of a ricochet fire, works will be subject to all the other evil consequences of enfilade, and that from much greater distances; parapets will be penetrated and ruined with greater facility; the interior of works will be plunged into from heights at greater ranges than have hitherto been practicable; and where magazines, barracks, or other important military establishments are exposed to such heights, and have hitherto been safe from them, they will now be liable to direct cannonade or bombardment.

The first approaches to fortified posts will be greatly facilitated by these advantages; nor does it appear that these effects can be counteracted by any alteration in the system of fortification; they will only admit of palliatives.

Guns and ramparts, particularly those of flanks that cannot be opposed by any distant direct fire, will require, more than ever, to be under bombproof cover; parapets must be thickened; openings of embrasures reduced to a minimum, and some of them, perhaps, strengthened by such applications round them—of iron, timber, and masonry-as shall be found most effective; escarp walls and buildings, and masonry in general, must be more covered than ever; defensive mining will also be of more influence than hitherto, as that, at least, will be unaffected by this improvement.

The advantages, then, will be considerable during the first preliminary operations against a fortress; and although Sir John Burgoyne is inclined to think that, when in well covered fortresses the contest becomes closer, which is the more important period in every formal, protracted siege, there will be little or no benefit to be derived from this species of ordnance, still there is reason to believe that the gain that will be obtained in

VOL. XLVI.