TheCircassian year was pretty well crowded with festivals until recently, when the introduction of the Mahometan doctrines put an end to a good many of the merry usages of paganism. The hearts of the people continuing to cling with tenacity, however, to what was most pleasing in the ancient superstitions, there are still left a considerable number of the old festal ceremonies and observances. At new year, at the beginning and ending of the March moon, at the gathering of the harvest, as well as on many minor occasions throughout the year, the people assemble to hold their sacred feasts, when for lack of priests the aged and most revered warriorspresent to the divinities the prayers of the congregation; the goat, the sheep, or the ox is sacrificed, and afterward feasted upon; libations of mead are poured, though less upon the ground than down the throats of the worshippers; while unleavened bread and cheese-cakes are devoured with a voraciousness very little akin to devotion. Dances, songs, and stories are duly intermingled; also racing, wrestling, and leaping; and finally, the solemnity is closed with exercises in sharp-shooting, and the discharge of firearms in the air.
The season immediately following the harvest when the wheat, the millet, and the corn have been garnered up in the storehouses, and the winter's fodder for the cattle has been stacked in the fields, is especially a time of merry-making. An unusual joy also attends the labors of securing the crops. For the mowers sing their national airs in the meadows, and keep time with the sweep of their scythes. Sometimes at the commencement of the hay-harvest they may be seen going into the fields in parties of fifties; and any company of travellers happening then to bepassing by will be good-naturedly attacked with both scythes and shouts, pulled from their horses, and carried off in triumph. For their ransom they will have to give at least a sheep to help out the evening's supper, besides honey enough to make mead for the whole company. And with such a prospect of feasting before them the laborers will return with increased zest to their work, swinging gaily their short scythes worn well-nigh to the backbone, roaming in parties hither and thither through the field, and attacking, amid songs and shoutings, the thickest masses of grass as if so many Russiancorps d'armée.
A pleasing rural sight indeed it is, the green valley glowing in the warm sunlight, and its grass coarse, but savory to the cattle, lying in heavy swaths, or piled in stacks. Mixed with this are the juicy chicory-stalks eight or ten feet in height, and tipped with light blue flowers. The sweet clover also, of both the white and red varieties, is scattered more or less among the taller grasses; so that the meadow is as fragrant as a bank of wild flowers, or a parterre in a garden.
With rejoicings somewhat similar is the return of seed-time celebrated, except it is then the time for hopes instead of thanksgivings. And the joy felt at this season when, the time of the singing of birds having come and the voice of the turtle being heard in the land, the grain is committed in faith of increase to the earth, is the greater in consequence of a period of partial abstinence and renunciation of social pleasures, analogous to the Christian lent, having preceded it. For during the month of March the Circassian puts himself on a low diet, refraining especially from the eating of eggs, and will neither hire, lend, borrow, or receive any thing from another, not even a light from a neighbor's house. So general seems to be the prompting of nature in favor of a period of fasting at the commencement of the spring. But the March moon once set there is immediately held a feast, at which what few of the eggs laid by in the course of the month preceding have not already in the course of the day been devoured, are fired at as a mark, and when the skins of the victims slain at the festival become the reward of the conquerors.
There is no great variety in the Circassian festivals, for whatever be the object of them, there is the same roasting of sheep and oxen, the same singing and dancing, the same mark-firing, horse-racing, and athletic games. The private feasts, also, are accompanied with amusements very similar in character, excepting that there is generally a very long succession of dishes, with interchange of presents between hosts and guests, and also with the difference that religious ceremonies are practised only on the more public occasions, the Circassian having, at least before the introduction of Mahometanism, no domestic worship, nor guiding his personal conduct by any religious sentiments separate from his sense of duty in the domestic and social relations, his feeling of honor, and love of country.
Theprincipal part of the early training of Schamyl consisted in daily practising the games and warlike exercises of his countrymen; but there was besides the important teaching received from Dschelal Eddin. The latter had begun when the boy was still of tender age giving him lessons in the Arabic tongue and grammar; and through a period of several years had continued expounding to him, probably in a class with others, the wisdom of the Koran, until he was sufficiently advanced in its knowledge to be appointed to chant it in the messdshed during divine service. Still later he instructed his intelligentpupil in the Mahometan literature and philosophy; no doubt, with acute elucidation of definitions and first principles, with learned comments on the maxims of the Sunnite and Sufite doctors, and with various illustrations of the character of the principal writers in oriental science and fiction, both Arabic and Persian. For the Daghestan teachers of theology, called ulemas or murschids, are not without repute for both subtilty and erudition; and Dschelal Eddin was one of the most learned among them.
Like most of these professors the sage of Himri was one of the sect of the Sufis; and it was their view of the Mahometan system of doctrine which he made it the burden of his lectures to explain and impress upon the mind of his pupil.
At first, the latter was indoctrinated in the law of externals which is called the Scharyat, and is to be observed alike by all Moslems. It prescribes prayers, almsgivings, fasting, pilgrimages, and ablutions, besides various rules to be observed in all the domestic and social relations. This is the common law of Mahometanism, the requirements of which aresupposed to be universally known, and may be complied with, at least in the letter, without either learning or piety.
Next was explained to him the higher law of the Tarykat, or "path" to perfection. The knowledge of this is not for the common people, but for those only who endeavor to obey the commands of Allah, not as external ordinances and ceremonies, but because they appreciate their justness, and who practise virtue not merely for the promise of reward, but also from a sincere admiration of its nature, and delight in its exercise. These alone are worthy of being initiated into the mystery of the tarykat.
But the path to truth is not the truth itself. As only he who perseveres and pushes onward in a race finally arrives at the goal, so only by the continued and disinterested pursuit of truth is it finally found, and the Sufi attains to the third stage in the spiritual life which is called the Hakyat. To reach this exalted condition of humanity the disciple must restrain all his natural passions and moderate all his desires. In the denial of self he must labor for the good of others. Whatevercontributes to refine the feelings, to exalt the thoughts, to extend the knowledge of the spiritual world, is to be desired; while the lust of the flesh, the lust of the eye, and the pride of life are to be as earnestly repressed and mortified. The seeker after the truth finds it only by frequent meditation amid the solitude of nature. Thither he will go both to study the pages of the sacred books and to decipher the scroll of his own inner consciousness. Thither also will he repair to commune with the one universal spirit which pervades all things, but which reveals itself especially to those who seek for it in the deep stillness of the forests, among the rocks of the mountains, and by the secluded waterfalls and fountains. In this high communion alone is it that man arrives at the perfection of which his nature is capable.
The state of the hakyat fully attained, man has to take but one step more and he is perfect even as God is perfect. This is the state called the Maarifat. For whoever has passed through the preceding degrees of perfection will at last be favored with intuitions in which, being in ecstasy, his spirit will minglewith the infinite spirit, and humanity will become divinity. To this condition of ecstasy the Sufis give the name ofh'al. In it meditation having been carried so far as to result in apathy and a total loss of self-consciousness, the flesh having been to such a degree mortified and annihilated as to admit of a temporary separation of the spirit from the body, and the personal self being so completely relieved of the limitations of time and space that it returns to its normal condition of universality, then the soul of the Sufi and the soul of Allah are one. Both are infinite, all-knowing, impersonal, and the only reality. Whoever has thus beheld the unveiled face of God is ever after superior to the law of externals, and is guided entirely by the inner light of reason. He fears no punishment and is influenced by no hope of reward, save the sting and approval of his own conscience. When he gives alms it is not because the scharyat prescribes, but his own heart prompts it; if he practises washings it is also not because he is required so to do by the Koran, but from himself regarding cleanliness as next to godliness. Henceforth his soul is vexed byno doubts respecting spiritual truth; he is exposed to no errors of faith; he is elevated to a state of beatitude which is even independent of the performance of good works; and being made a partaker of the unity of the divine nature he knows no further distinction of sects, but regards the true believers of all creeds as brethren. "Whoso," say the Habistan, "does not acknowledge that it is indifferent whether he is a Mussulman or a Christian, has not raised himself to the truth, and knows not the essence of being."
Such in brief was the system of religious doctrine which Schamyl learned sitting at the feet of Dschelal Eddin. But that it was fully adopted by him in the heyday of youth and in possession of an intellect as penetrating as his feeling was ardent, is not to be believed. More or less of its influence, however, may be seen in the habits of temperance and frugality uniformly maintained by him, in his perfect self-control, in his love for contemplation amid the solitude of nature, as well as by his subsequently making it, at least theoretically, the rule of his life and the basis of his system of policy.
Theage at which Schamyl took a wife is not known; but probably it was not over that of twenty-one. Nor, although later in life his harem consisted of three ladies, one of whom was a beautiful young Armenian, can any positive information be given respecting the character or person of the one espoused first. In accordance with Circassian usages she might have been selected by his atalik from the class of maidens in Himri whose circumstances in life were not unlike his own; or which is perhaps more likely to have been the case, she might have been one who was preferred by the young man himself from hishaving been smitten by her grace in the dance on the green, or having received from her fair hands the embroidered scarf won as a prize in the games.
However this might have been, the first step towards the marriage must have consisted in carrying off the girl, nothing loth doubtless, through the agency of a party of his friends. This feat successfully accomplished, though frequently it is no more than a formality and mere fiction in usage, the next thing to be done was to settle with her father or friends the price of her. The market value of a maid in Circassia depends upon both her rank and her charms. If a belle of the blood of the chieftains of a tribe in the western Caucasus, she may be worth as much as two hundred and fifty pieces of merchandise, valued at one dollar each, besides eight or ten horses and four or five serf-girls, which is more than the price formerly paid by Homer's heroes, as in the case of the
But it is not probable that Schamyl gave forhis wife more than a gun or a sabre, a horse or a couple of beeves. But this much it must certainly have cost him to get respectably married; for without gifts to her parents no Circassian young woman is ever given in marriage, unless in some such exceptional circumstances as when Agamemnon wishing to appease the wrath of Achilles after the robbery of Briseis proposed to replace her by one of his own daughters, and said that "far from exacting from him the accustomed presents he would endow the girl with immense riches."
This rule, however does not apply to widows, who being considered as the property of the fraternity to which belonged the deceased husband, are given away gratis to whoever will accept of them. And while a female of this class would not fetch so much as a cow or a buffalo in the market, no man of course would ever deem it worth his while to be at the pains of the elopement.
But in the case of a maid being carried off, unless a satisfactory dowry were promptly given, a feud would arise between the parties which could scarcely be settled without bloodshed.If, however, a young man being deeply smitten with love, or for any other reason, elopes with a fair one before he has accumulated a sufficient fortune to defray the expense of such a luxury, it is common enough for him to pay down what money or valuables he may have, and give security for the remainder. The transaction being like any other in business is done in plain words, and without any pretence on the part of the suitor of being actuated solely by disinterested affection.
Once the bargain struck there is a feast. When the parties have a sufficiency of means, the relatives and friends assemble to the number perhaps of several hundreds to celebrate the betrothals by a picnic and a dance from morning till night. A master of ceremonies with a long flat baton as a symbol of authority makes his proclamation calling upon all present to lay aside their feuds, if any they have, and take their places in the dance. The musicians with three-fingered pipes and two-stringed violins are drawn up in the centre of the ring, when each gallant placing his arms under those of the damsels on eitherside, and interlacing his fingers with theirs, they all move slowly around in the immense circle, singing at the same time a sort of accompaniment to the instrumental music, swinging the body gracefully backwards and forwards, and rising on the toes in such a way as to communicate an undulating motion to the whole ring as it goes round. Pistols would be fired every few minutes over the heads of the dancers, and mock onsets made upon the circle by mounted horsemen, who would be driven back in turn by parties armed with branches of trees and making the air ring with their shouts. There would also be the usual horse-racing, wrestling, and running, besides the entertainment of the feast itself, which would be served by waiters on horseback as well as on foot, and who together would keep up a brisk circulation of tables and trenchers.
When finally the marriage day arrives, all dues under the matrimonial compact having been paid or satisfactorily secured, the couple are joined together with still more feasting and the observance of additional ceremonies. A friend of the bridegroom mounting onhorseback and taking on his crupper the maiden decked out in all her finery, and covered with a long white veil, gallops off with her to the house of some relative where the wedding is to be celebrated. Received at the door by the matron of the house, she is conducted with grave formality to the chamber set apart for her reception, where she awaits the arrival of her lord, and lights the nuptial torch of pine sticks in order to keep away any supernatural enemy who might be tempted to run off with her at this very nick of time.
An elderly dame also now performs the mystic ceremony of walking three times around the bridal couch, repeating the while the words of some Arabic charm, and afterwards placing by the bedside three earthen-ware pots filled with corn, and containing each a lighted lamp.
At last the hour of midnight arrived, the impatient bridegroom springing into his saddle gallops to the house of his friend, and conducted into the presence of his bride instantly rips open her corset with his poniard. This is the conclusion of the ceremony bywhich is rather cut than tied the Circassian knot of matrimony, there being neither priest nor magistrate employed to fasten it any more securely.
Thebride of Schamyl must have been unlike her countrywomen generally, if she was not handsome. For the Circassian females have long been famed for their beauty, not only being in demand for the supply of the Turkish harems, but having formerly been sought in marriage by the Hungarian kings and the czars of Muscovy, as well as by the Byzantine princes and the pashas of Stamboul. They are described by travellers as of good height having slight and pliant forms like the birch among trees, with complexion either fair or olive, the old Greek cast of features, and eyes and hair generally dark,though some writers in describing them sing also of
On their heads the girls wear a bonnet not unlike the Albanian skullcap, of scarlet or some other brilliant color, and trimmed with lace of silver. Beneath this their hair falls down their shoulders in braids which are confined at the end by a silver cord, or are tied like the tresses of the Cossack girls with bright ribbons that nearly sweep the ground. Sometimes also these plaits are gracefully confined in a silken network.
Over the shift is worn a jacket of some gay color and confined in front by silver clasps; or it may be simply a leathern corselet joined together by stitches. In either case the waist is incased as it were in a straight jacket, which being put on at the age of ten or even younger, and worn constantly until the marriage night, restrains the fulness of nature throughout the period of maidenhood. A skirt open in front and confined around the waist by a scarf or girdle, falls sufficientlyshort of the ankles to show the wide Turkish trowsers which are tied above them.
Closely fitting morocco slippers cover the feet, which being kept as scrupulously clean as those of the Hindoo women, if not like theirs ornamented with rings, are indoors frequently left bare; while out of the house a kind of wooden clogs are worn to avoid the dirt. The slippers are sufficiently coquettish, being made of red or green morocco, and of a size to admit the foot only in part, with small high heels, and dainty, pointed toes slightly turned up.
The hands, which as well as the feet are small, have the finger nails dyed with the juice of the flowers of the balsamina, and are protected in the open air by mittens. The natural colors of the face, however, are generally not heightened by the pencil, although the Circassian fair are partial to the brightest tints in their apparel, being thereto invited by the gorgeous lights of a landscape filled with a multitude of flowers and in which the very rocks and snows burn morning and evening with hues scarcely less brilliant and variegated.
The daughters of families a little elevated above the general social level, go to school in the mosques together with the boys, and are taught like them to speak and write the Turkish. At home all are instructed in the feminine arts of spinning and weaving, as well as in embroidery, the knitting of lace, the making of all articles of dress, and also the plaiting of straw mats and baskets. They often serve the guests of the master of the house, bringing water to wash the feet of the newly arrived, though not like the Mary of the Scriptures anointing them with frankincense and wiping them with the hair of the head. The aged men being like the stranger universally honored in Circassia, receive from the young maidens the most dutiful attentions; and it is always their privilege to sit by the couch of the veterans brought home wounded from the wars. The one are petted throughout their second childhood with frequent presents of sweetmeats and baskets of nuts; and the other feel their pains abated while the hands of the most beautiful of the tribe softly comb the tuft of hair left growing above their brows. But in return, these tooare treated by the other sex with corresponding courtesy; for every warrior is a gallant knight, ever ready, going and returning from the foray, to give his escort to the damsel wishing to pass from hamlet to hamlet, and gracefully lifting her upon his crapper whenever by chance he meets her on foot in the valleys.
The Circassian maid is said to have in her veins some of the blood of the Amazons who anciently bore the pharetra, and followed hunting in these mountains. Her style of dress and measured gait, together with her sharing the martial sentiments of the society in which she lives, give her still something of the port of Diana, and make her fit to be the warrior's bride. But at the same time she is not lacking in the feminine graces. Dressed in brocade or in rags, the Circassian girl is represented by travellers as never awkward, and never failing to assume spontaneously the most easy and natural as well as the most dignified attitudes. Her manners have but little of the excessive reserve afterwards adopted when she becomes a wife. But so long as she is in the market for a husband,she allows herself to be seen freely by all men whether wishing or not to become purchasers. She goes abroad unveiled; dances with the other sex; mingles fearlessly though without effrontery amid the groups of men; kisses the hand of the stranger before seating herself on the divan by his side; and, though truly modest and decorous in her deportment, she yields her cheek, almost without a blush, to the lips of the warrior who, returning from the slaughter of the enemy, feels entitled to claim those favors which in less fortunate lands can only be stolen by swains the most dexterous and whose stars aid them.
The Circassian girls are sparingly nourished, says an ancient writer,[1] living mostly on milk, bread of millet, and pastry. Delicate in her food as she is neat in her dress, growing up in the healthy air of the mountains, living in a society of simple tastes and natural habits, always treated with gallant courtesy by a race of men whose hearts are mostly moved by a love of war and of beauty, it is not strange that nature should have preserved through so many generations something of thetype of loveliness which adorned the world's age of gold, and which in modern times has made the Caucasian head to be regarded by civilized man as the truest image of his Maker.
[1] Pallas.
Whilethe Circassian damsel, in her modest simplicity, is tolerant of freedoms not altogether consistent with occidental notions of propriety, and is generally ready enough to flee her tribe with a lover who happens to be unable to pay the dowry demanded by a too avaricious father or guardian, on becoming a married woman she takes the veil and retires from the gaze of men almost as effectually as she would do by shutting herself up in a convent. Now when she goes abroad, all her gay colors are covered by the white mantle which envelops her whole figure. Her sanctum, if she lives in a hamlet, is separate fromthe other buildings, is inclosed by a wooden fence, and concealed by the foliage of trees and shrubbery. No males enter it, excepting those of her own family and the ataliks of her children. Even her husband does not visit her in the daytime, but steals to her couch under cover of the darkness of night like a paramour. When out of the house she scrupulously avoids meeting his eye, and on perceiving him in the same path goes about or stands aside in order to avoid his notice.
Having been bought with a price, she is rather the slave than the companion of her husband, who may have as many wives as he likes, or rather can pay for. She rises on his entrance into her apartments and remains standing until he is seated; and this in fact is a mark of respect paid by woman to all males, except they be serfs, but also to the elders of their own sex. Latterly, however, the introduction of Mahometanism has brought even into these mountains a partial recognition of those rights which in some western countries have recently secured for the wife the blessings of financial as well as social independence. Under the law of theKoran she is nominally free; can hold property in her own right; and on the infringement of her privileges, may have the satisfaction of prosecuting her husband at law and bringing him into court to answer her.
The Circassian woman, however, not having as yet become accustomed to place much reliance on her legal rights, contents herself with the exercise of those means of influence, if not of control, which have been given her by nature. Denied the pleasure of the society of her lord during the day, when at evening he comes to her apartments, fatigued it may be by the exercise of the chase or the exertions of the foray, she smoothes the brows wrinkled by care, dissipates by gentle caresses the pains of overwearied nature, and wins over to the emotions of conjugal love, the soul which all day long has been vexed by angry passions and the rage of war.
As a wife she is faithful; for indeed the jealousy of a Circassian husband is not to be endured. The disgrace of being sent home to her parents and of compelling them to pay back her purchase-money, would pierce her heart like a knife; not to mention othermore barbarous punishments with which the haughty warrior instantly avenges any encroachment on his honor.
She is not only dutiful, but diligent in his service. She prepares with her own hands his food; she makes all his clothes, covering them with stitches until they become a raiment of needle-work; and helped by her daughters she even manufactures his shoes and caps, his tent and shaggy cloak, besides embroidering the coverings of his arms and the trappings of his war-horse. To the Circassian woman therefore might be addressed the commands of Telemachus to Penelope:—
Nor in her poverty does she refuse the severer labors of the garden and the field. Frequently she delves in the earth by the side of her Adam. Sometimes she earns in the sweat of her brows the bread of both, while he combats the invaders of their common country in pass and plain, or practises his athletic games in the peaceful valley, or even sits idle by the house-door, interrupting hislistlessness only to burnish a weapon or caress his steed. And in the higher and more barren mountains, if the reports of travellers are to be credited, his better half, as modest and still more industrious than the first mother, may be seen picking the flinty soil during the heats of the day decked out with none of the finery worn on occasions of ceremony, but clad simply in that one garment deemed indispensable in all countries having made the smallest progress in civilization.[1]
The headdress of the married woman is not the tiara of the maid, but some kind of plain or ornamental stuff wound round the head in the form of a turban, and with ends falling gracefully down on the shoulders. This completely covers the hair which is worn short, with curls in the neck. Over it on going out is thrown a veil of snow-white muslin which descending mingles its folds with those of the mantle. This latter is often a large square of European woollen of the finest texture that can be afforded by the wearer; and whether fine or coarse has always a picturesque look in the distance; and nearer byis generally worn with a certain degree of womanly coquetry which lends grace to its folds, and to the dullest eyes reveals half-glimpses of the beauty concealed beneath.
Here the fashions of dress, whether for males or females, never change. Garments therefore not being thrown aside or altered with every month's variation of style as in the west, are frequently made of costly materials and adorned with such elegance of needle-work as to render them almost as precious as the sacred poet's vesture of gold wrought about with divers colors. This applies of course to garments of ceremony chiefly. A very fine paraja or mantle of camel or goat's hair, a skirt of brocade, or a scarf ornamented with silver thread will sometimes outlast a generation, and be handed down an heirloom even to grandchildren. The belle who putting on the apparel which possibly a preceding century has fabricated, does not find herself in an antiquated cut nor with stitches placed amiss, loses no time of course in dreaming of new fashions, nor self-respect in being obliged to parade in the old ones. Her only fashionable foible is that ofknitting silver lace, she not having as yet been initiated into the mystery of making Chinese boxes and card-racks, dolls' dresses and family portraits in worsted.
[1] Dubois.
Serfdom, to a limited extent, exists in the Caucasus, more particularly in the western part. It is, however, a comparatively mild form of bondage, the only real slaves in the mountains being the captives taken in war who are compelled to do most of the hewing of wood and the drawing of water. The serfs are rarely transferred with the land, and never without their own consent. In return for their services they receive maintenance, clothing, lodging, and some yearly gratuity. Wives are furnished them gratis; and while their sons remain the serfs of the master, the money received for the daughters when soldin marriage is equally divided between him and the father. Their occupations consist in cultivating the soil, taking care of horses and cattle, and waiting in the guest-house; they being under no obligation to serve in war or even give attendance on journeys. Often they farm the land of their masters for half the product. They also have the right of purchasing their freedom at the price of a certain number of oxen; and if ill-treated may flee to another master for protection, who on payment of a moderate compensation to their former owner is entitled to retain them. Socially they are on a footing of almost equality with their lords, wearing the same dress, living in similar houses, partaking of about the same diet, sharing in all games and festivities, and associating on all occasions with freemen as if they were their peers.
The well-known Circassian slave-trade is confined to the sale of females. In the eastern Caucasus girls are rarely bought and sold except in marriage; but in the western they are exported to supply the harems of the Turks, more especially those of Constantinople. At one time this trade was forbidden byRussia, and all of her subjects found engaged in it were sent to Siberia; but in 1845 it was again legalized on condition that the females to be exported into Turkey should take out letters of Russian protection, the object being partly to conciliate the Circassians, and partly to create a class of persons resident in the dominions of the sultan who should depend upon the czar as their protector and lord paramount.
Even when prohibited, however, the traffic was carried on by means of small craft which under protection of Russian papers obtained at Trebizond under pretence of going to Kertsch for grain, braved the dangers of the winter voyage when from the inclemency of the weather the Russian cruisers had been withdrawn from the coast of Circassia, and taking in their precious cargo of souls landed it at Sinope or Samsoun. Thence conducted privately to Trebizond, they were finally conveyed by Turkish and Austrian steamers to Constantinople.
These girls were the daughters of the serfs and poorer class of persons; those of nobles, chiefs, and men of means being rarely if eversold to the slave-merchant. Sold they however must be even if they remain at home, the Asiatic doctrine prevailing in the Caucasus that the woman should be bought, not given in marriage, and where a dowry in addition to a wife would be the gilding of refined gold and adding sugar to the honey-comb. The married woman is the property of her lord—or was until nominally set free by the introduction of the law of the Koran. The idea of becoming the slave of a master was therefore nearly synonymous in the mind of a maid of low degree with that of becoming the wife of a husband; and to make the journey to Constantinople for the purpose of being bought by a wealthy Turk, was looked forward to by many a one as a settlement in life preferable to remaining at home the wife of a poor peasant. This sentiment was encouraged by the sight, not uncommon in Circassia, of females who after having obtained an education and a competency in Constantinople have returned to reside in their own country. It is also well known to the humblest maiden that the high officers in the Turkish state often take to themselves wivesof the daughters of the Caucasus, who, if they do not return to the land of their fathers, at least play, in that of their adoption, a part in society superior to that of the wives of even chiefs and princes in the mountains.
Accordingly, it is not generally looked upon by the Caucasian female born in poverty, as a misfortune to be sold into Turkish captivity. She pleases her fancy, on the contrary, with imagining that she will become the wife of, it may be, the sultan himself, or of a pasha, or of the admiral of the fleet. She will be the light of the harem of a nabob with many tails. She will be dressed in rich silks and velvets, and adorned with gold and jewelry. She will live in the great aoul of Stamboul, in a sakli by the Golden horn, or in the woods that skirt the Sweet Waters. Nor, poor thing, does she know or stop to consider that she may be thrown into those same beautiful waters sewed up alive in a sack. Many a one, no doubt, leaves her home however humble with a sigh of regret; many a one sheds bitter tears of shame when made to stand forth half naked in the marketplace; and many a one even in the gorgeous hallsand perfumed chambers of Constantinopolitan princes, tired of the watching of eunuchs and of the bickerings of rivals, would gladly exchange all the luxuries of the harem for the freedom of a hut in her native mountains.
Still it is the testimony of travellers that the great majority of poor females in Circassia are as ready to go to Stamboul as pilgrims to Mecca. When captured by Russian cruisers on the voyage, some of them have been known to cast themselves into the sea or to drive a knife into their hearts rather than submit to become wives to the enemies of their country, the hated Muscovites; but they have no aversion to the Turk. Often they suffer somewhat on the voyage for lack of suitable shelter, food, and clothing; and generally they arrive at Constantinople much better subjects for the Turkish bath than the harem. But they are often placed in seminaries to be educated for the places they are to occupy in the houses of the great; being on their arrival frequently not more than twelve years of age, and always destitute of the few accomplishments considered indispensable in the families of Turks of any distinction.A beautiful young Circassian, when thus prepared for the life of the harem, will sometimes sell for as much as twenty or even thirty or forty thousand piastres, though the ordinary price might not be more than five or ten thousand. But even in Circassia an Englishman has been known to pay for a wife "three hundred and twenty-five pieces of cotton cloth," valued there at upwards of six thousand piastres. Since the repeal of the Russian law forbidding the slave-trade, however, the price of this merchandise has greatly fallen in the market.
There is no evil, however great, without some good; and to the Circassian trade in female slaves is to be traced the superiority, both of physiognomy and of blood, which belongs to the modern Turk above the Tartar of the steppe and of the desert.
Thesociety of which Schamyl on reaching the age of manhood became a member in full was a free democracy. In the western Caucasus the various tribes, such as the Kabardians, the Ubighé, and the Adighé, who are the Circassians proper, live under a form of social organization more or less feudal and aristocratic; but in the eastern, among the Lesghians, the Tchetchenians, and the inhabitants of Daghestan, there is for the most part no distinction of classes. Several small tribes in this latter division which are of Tartar origin are indeed governed by khans; but even among them where the form of governmentis despotic, as well as west of the Terek where it is aristocratic, there prevails such a spirit of personal independence together with such an equality of civil rights and social conditions, that the Circassians in general may best be characterized as associations of free brothers, not unlike the Germans as described by Tacitus.
More especially is this true of the Lesghians of whom is Schamyl. Among them previously to the establishment of his system of government, there was no other chief of the state than he who by general consent led the warriors of the tribe on their expeditions against the enemy. Nor did such office of leader outlast a foray or a campaign. In time of peace all were brothers, free and equal before the law, with only such diversity of social condition as might result from a difference in natural gifts or in the favors of fortune. Whoever had been endowed with most commanding powers, whoever was foremost in valor and the exercise of all manly virtues, was in fact a chieftain though without the formality of an election; he was king though without a title; and between the natural andthe divine right to govern there was practically no difference.
The public affairs of the tribe were regulated in general assembly. The freemen came together at their own will to sit in the council ring on the greensward beneath the trees. In these meetings no officer claimed precedence as a right, but all granted it by consent to the elders and those most distinguished for valor and the gift of speech. The counsels of age and experience were heard first. The wise man also, whoever he was, the valiant in arms, the influential from worth of character, all gave their opinion; but most the assembly hung upon the sweet tongue of eloquence. For the orator has ample scope in the free assemblies of the Circassians. When he rises to speak, especially if he be advanced in years, the principal men of the tribe sometimes even come forward and reverently kiss his robe. If possessed of more of the impetuosity of early life, he will perhaps clash into the ring on horseback and harangue the assembly from the saddle. Then if in the midst of his impassioned volubility any Hotspur interrupt the orator, the latter foams with rageand would transgress all bounds of propriety if the lifted hand of some elder did not instantly restore silence.
When the object of the meeting is to agree on an expedition against the enemy, the favorite topic and constant burden of eloquence is the oppression and the cruelty of the Russians. As the speaker dilates upon their burnings and shedding of blood, the aoul laid low by their artillery, the women violated, the youth carried away captive, the tribes gradually driven back into the mountains, his voice rages with indignation or wails in the plaintive tones of unaffected sorrow. His eye flashes beneath the shaggy, contracted brows; the clenched fist is relaxed only to grasp shaska or poniard; the blood rushes and returns from the cheek; and the chest heaves with violently struggling emotions. Mean-while in reply is heard the low, half-stifled sob; the irrepressible tears trickle down the sunburnt cheeks of those who weep for their country, if not their friends; teeth are clenched and brows are knit and sabres are half-drawn; while at intervals is responded amen! amen! and at the conclusion a shoutof applause breaks from the universal throat, and rings through the air until the echoing hill-sides give it back to each other in boisterous accord.
New laws are rarely made by this assembly, the tribe being governed very much by custom and ancient usage. Whenever these prove an insufficient rule of action, the Koran, in those parts of the mountains where it has been introduced, is appealed to. Of course, in a state of society so simple and unchanging there is little need of that constant lawmaking and unmaking deemed so indispensable in free and more civilized communities. Whatever rules of conduct have been longest established and found to meet the necessities of many generations, are by these primitive mountaineers held most sacred. To execute laws, therefore, not to make them, is the principal object of what little government exists in the Caucasus. Offenders are tried in the council ring; punishments consist mostly of fines, which if not paid by the guilty individual himself, must be by his family or his tribe; and crimes against persons which are not thus compounded are prosecuted by the injuredparty and those of his blood even to the third and fourth generations.
Hence arise those numerous feuds which, arraying family against family and tribe against tribe, produce a degree of mutual alienation of which great use has been made by the Russians in their war of subjugation. For the right of revenge is one of the three great principles on which is based the whole system of Circassian usage, the exercise of hospitality and respect for age being the two others. But to limit the sway of this old law of an eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth under which intestine wars prevailed, as formerly among the clans of Scotland, and suits at law were protracted from generation to generation, as in the chancery of England, fraternities have latterly been established and oaths imposed on the members, whereby the ends of justice have been better secured as well as domestic peace greatly promoted. For an oath taken over even a few amulets is sufficient to secure the fulfilment of an engagement; and when formally administered upon the Koran suspended from two rifle-rests, the warrior, who never trembled before, is, by thesimple ceremony, agitated with dread, and having deposited his rifle, his pistol, or his bow, will die but what he will keep his word.
The barbarity of this law of blood has also been always more or less counteracted by the affectionate respect for age, wherever met with, which runs through the code of Circassian manners, as well as by such an universal practice of hospitality as keeps the door of the apartment for guests standing wide open from one end of the year to the other throughout the mountains, and which enables even the foreigner to enter the country unharmed, by placing himself under the protection of any chieftain he may select for his konak or guardian.