Frenchman's aversion—pepper. Water was
handed round as the appropriate beverage to
this meal.

No one can visit Circassia without being
desirous to know something of the women
whose beauty has passed into a proverb. Our
French travellers had an opportunity afforded
them of seeing what they were like, for on
the morning that followed their inevitable
nightmare, Mehemet Bey came down to the
enclosure and said they were at liberty to
visit all the neighbouring huts, even those of
the females. "Everything a Circassian has
is," said the Hungarian, "for sale; you are
not merely his guests, on this occasion, but
very likely his customers; make, therefore,
as minute an examination as you
please."

"Do you mean to say," demanded the
doctor, "that they sell their daughters?"

"Certainly, just as they would sell their
sons, slaves, dogs or horses. Not long ago I
was offered a beautiful girl by her father in
exchange for a fine greyhound which I had
brought from Kars."

Encouraged by these assurances, Dr. Jeannel
and his friends entered the huts, where
they found several girls, not so beautiful,
however, as they are generally described.
Their best points were magnificent eyes and
luxuriant tresses, which fell heavily on their
shoulders. But their cotton dresses were
wofully ragged and their persons shamefully
dirty—drawbacks which, however, did not
prevent them from playing off all sorts of
coquetries as they were severally passed in
review.

"Their most ardent desire," said the colonel,
"is that you should purchase them. The life
they lead here in the paternal huts, at the
bottom of these sunless ravines, is very dull
and wretched. They work hard and eat
nothing but millet, while tradition paints to
their imagination, in the most glowing colours,
all the delights of Stamboul. Their sole
ambition is to become the property of some
pasha, and to do that the first step is to get
away from hence. You appear," he
continued, "to think that these girls are not
particularly handsome; and, to say the truth,
you are right. But they are made of the
right stuff. It is the dirt, and squalor, and
bad living, that spoils them in the miserable
holes in which they are brought up. For
the full development of Circassian beauty
they require to be transplanted to the
Turkish harems before they are thirteen
years old. All sorts are sent off—the ugly
ones by way of experiment, the beauties for
a more certain market; the former fetch
about a thousand piastres each (eight pounds;
which, by the way, is nearly two pounds more
than the value of the French apothecary), but
a beautiful girl is worth ten thousand or even
twenty thousand piastres (from one hundred
to two hundred pounds). The value of a boy
is, however, double that of a girl, and the age
at which the sale is made is earlier—
ordinarily at ten years; the reason for this is
the greater utility of the male population in
the constant war which is waged against
Russia."

The Hungarian colonel also enlightened
the French doctor on the subject of local
slavery. The captives made by the
Circassians are chiefly Russians, and their state
of durance is not particularly enviable.
They are badly fed, only half-clad, and are
compelled to labour very hard; though, in their
natural rnoujik capacity, they were, probably,
but little better off. It generally happens
that, in the course of a few years, they forget
their native language, and when, as is
frequently the case, they marry Circassian girls,
horses and arms are given to them, and they
become incorporated with a tribe.
Sometimes they attempt to escape, but the
experiment is dangerous. A fugitive slave is
easily recognised as he traverses the country,
and it is an invariable custom with the chiefs
to send him back to his original owner, who,
to prevent a second flight, makes a deep
incision in the fugitive's instep, buries a
bean in the wound, and, keeping it there by
means of bandages, creates a chronic
inflammatory swelling of the bones of the foot,
and superinduces a life-long lameness.

"By hook or by crook" is a mode of
acquisition not unpractised by the Turkish
authorities in Circassia, nor was it, perhaps,
looked upon altogether with an unfavourable
eye by the chief commissary of the French
expedition. In the neighbourhood of Soudjak
a tolerably large supply of sheep and cattle
were obtained, let us hope, by legitimate
purchase, unless the officers and soldiers parted
with their most intimate garments; but
whether or not, the opportunity of increasing
the flocks and herds, by any means that
offered, was not neglected by Ibrahim Bey,
the commander of the escort. An example
of the free and easy style of catering was
afforded on the return of the expedition to
Anapa. A pair of oxen, coupled by a cord,
were grazing in a field not far from the
roadside. Perceiving them, Ibrahim Bey
addressed a few words in a low tone to one of
his men, who forthwith rode off, turned the
flank of the oxen, and drove them towards
those that were under charge of the escort.
They had not, however, proceeded far with
this cateran spoil, before a ragged boy came
tearing along at full speed, and, panting for
breath, addressed a vigorous remonstrance to
Ibrahim Bey. The latter replied in angry
terms, but the altercation ended by his
ordering the oxen to be given up to their
legitimate owner, with the observation that
he ought to take more care of his property.
In this manner, amongst others, the French
army in the Crimea, recruited their beef and
mutton; but for all that is apparent from
Dr. Jeaunel's narrative, the expedition
derived no very remarkable advantage from