Such expeditions were set on foot either by some chieftain who rode from aoul to aoul calling upon the brave to follow him; or by a summons sent abroad to the warriors of a certain district inviting them to assemble in the council ring at a given time and place for the purpose of agreeing upon an attack upon some fort, or a foray within the lines of the enemy. The spot selected for holding the assembly would be some convenient hill-top or vale shaded by trees. There, with no little rude eloquence, accompanied by the singing the praises of heroes, the subject of the proposed expedition would be considered, and the course to be pursued be determined by a majority of voices. With scarcely the formality of an election, the general preference would select some chieftain to head the incursion, if finally agreed upon. And to set off if the occasion pressed, would hardly require more preparation than the springing into their saddles; for at the bows of these could quickly be hung a sufficiency of provisions for their simple wants, while ammunition and arms are always worn about their person.
The Circassian spares his horse when he can, and generally rides slowly to the scene of contest. Indeed, the route admits of no hurrying; for it often leads along precipices which would turn almost any head but his own; winds a narrow, rugged path over the mountains; picks its way along the rocky bed of the torrent; dives into forests tangled with vines and brambles; and cannot always turn aside even from the bog and the quagmire. But his hardy steed never tires; and up hill or down dale toils patiently, bravely, cheerfully, as if conscious that he was going on to meet the armed men, and smelling afar off the future battle, the thunder of the captains, and the shouting. Sometimes the party travels through the night, each warrior being muffled in a shaggy capote or bourka, which covers not only the rider but the entire back of his steed. Above protrude the barrels of the rifles, while below dangle the horse-tails, making, by their constantly dangling to and fro, the night-march a very promenade of hobgoblins.
But on the longer expeditions the war party halts at night. Some green spot having been selected where there is pasturage and water, the horses are tethered, or allowed to graze under care of persons appointed to watch them. Their saddles furnish a pillow at night, and their cloth a carpet to sit upon. Each person contributes from the leathern bottles and bags at his saddle-bow a portion towards the general mess, which is prepared by a certain number of the party in turn; and while it is being made ready, the others having said their evening prayers and performed their ablutions resign themselves to the soothing influences of the chibouque, if not prohibited, and to the cordial of coffee, if they have any. The supper at the very best will consist of hot millet or barley cakes, and the savory pilaff of minced mutton and millet or rice. A little honey will be sure to be added, and possibly dried fruits. This, however, is on the supposition that there are a few sumpter horses loaded with provisions, as is generally the case when the party is a large one. There may also have been more or less game picked up by the way. A bowl of mead or skhone is generally to be had by the Circassian, let the supper it accompanies be never so scanty; and the sharp appetite which heaven sends to those journeying through the hills in the saddle, will season even a little sour milk and a few cakes of millet and honey, if there be nothing else, with more than the savor of a feast. The chieftain fares no better than his clansmen; all share in the mess alike.
The supper finished, and every man having carefully cleansed his weapons, loaded and primed his guns and pistols, placed his sabre by his saddle-pillow, while his faithful poniard guards the side it never leaves, and finally a short prayer for protection having been offered to Allah, the sentinels also being duly set, the warrior who is to fall in battle on the morrow lies down to sleep as peaceful as that of the babe he has left behind in the aoul, and soft as if the canopy overhead were not the star-spangled curtain of the skies. If the party have tents, as is sometimes the case, they are pitched by cutting down branches of trees for lack of poles, and then covering them with the mats and felts which have been transported in bales on horseback. These simple structures serve sufficiently well to keep out wind and rain; while the boughs of many kinds of trees furnish a couch both elastic and fragrant.
Watch fires, too, are often kept burning through the night; and in cold weather they serve likewise to keep warm those sleeping around them. When the fires are numerous they light up with picturesque effect the grim-faced rocks and the solemn woods. A whole mountain side even may be illuminated by the multitude of flames, making the granite, porphyry, and limestone glow with colors more gorgeous than those borrowed from the light of day. Or the gloom of the deep glen is dissipated and devoured by the lambent tongues of fire, while the rocks over against each other burn with the additional radiance reflected from their faces. Beacon answers to beacon from cliffs and hilltops. Perhaps the enemy's fires far off diffuse a glow through another quarter of the heavens. The reeds of the Kuban and the Terek set on fire by the Russians to destroy the ambuscades of the mountaineers, touch with a dull red tint the low northern horizon; here and there conflagrations raging in the grass-grown steppes show at night where lie the vast and dreary confines of the Muscovite; while perhaps the moon sinking below the Black mountains draws, with a line of silver, the broken outline of their ridges, leaving in the blackness of midnight the vast forests and outcropping rocks below.
When the first faint blush of breaking day suffuses the eastern sky far off above the Caspian, the warrior's eye already open is straining to catch it. His tent is struck; his horse saddled; his arms girded on; and he ready for the march. As the gray dawn deepening to crimson fills the mountains ere the sun be risen with its increasing, all-pervading light, the horsemen descend in small parties from the already purple heights into the mists which hang their thin veils over the depths of the valleys. Their arms reflect the beams of the risen sun, and the red or purple in their caps is heightened by the glow of the mountain tops. Gaily they gallop down the easy declivities, their horses snuffing eagerly the fresh air of the morning, but their ragged banners too wet with the dews of night to flaunt upon the zephyrs that, newly risen, scarcely move their wings. The foremost riders, gaining the open valley screened by an intervening mountain from the plain of the enemy, prance over it, and companies of horse coming in from different directions join the general rendezvous until, all counted, they may amount to two or three hundred, or as many thousand men. For seldom does a Circassian chief lead on a raid into the enemy's country with either less than the former number or more than the latter.
The guides now come in from reconnoitring the posture of affairs on the steppe on the other side of the mountain. In accordance with their advice most probably had the expedition been originally agreed upon; for they had represented the enemy's flocks and herds as left unguarded save by the shepherds, the villages undefended except by the boors, and the posture of things generally to be such as to promise a certain victory with booty and captives. Now they come in, having taken a final survey from some wooded nook on the hill-side of the boundless steppean prospect, as from his cottage on the cliff the fisherman looks out upon the level waste of the ocean. The Terek is reported sufficiently low to be forded; for the stream which in the higher mountains pours down with headlong fury its waters, transparent save where the white and red crystals which form its bed are concealed by the foam, creeps through the steppe a sluggish, muddy current, passable with safety at certain points and certain stages of the water. In the plain beyond stands a Cossack village or stanitza, together with a small fort or krepost surrounded by mud walls, armed with a piece or two of artillery, and garrisoned by a small body of infantry. It is one of the chain of similar Cossack settlements which, called "the line" of the Caucasus, stretches from the mouth of the Kuban to that of the Terek; and as the invaders penetrate further and further into the mountains, they carry this system of Cossack colonies and fort defenses with them, so that the chain forged to bind within its thousand links the liberties of all the tribes is gradually drawn tighter and tighter.
Over against the ford, and at no great distance from it, stands a Cossack guard-post. It is constructed of four poles twenty or more feet in height, which below are fastened in the earth and support on the upper extremity a seat or lookout. To this the Cossack climbs by means of a ladder, and there he sits by day and by night watching the forest of reeds on the river banks, watching the level sweep of the steppe on either side, watching the opposite hills and mountains. Forlorn indeed would be the poor Cossack notwithstanding he has before his eyes the glory of the Circassian hills and the distant snow-summits mingling with the clouds, were it not for the bottle of schnapps by his side, and the stroking of his long moustache. For weeks and months he may watch without seeing a single Circassian. But when he does, he instantly kindles his beacon fire, and descending seizes his lance left leaning against one of the four posts, and springing upon his horse which stands fastened to another, gallops to the stanitza. In all haste the women and children fly to the fort; the soldiers drive in the swine or cattle which feed on the grass around it; the sentinels fire the cannon to give the alarm to the neighboring stanitzas; and every Cossack within sound of the signal-firing, vaulting into the saddle and putting his steed to his mettle, hastens lance in hand to drive back the enemy.
But ere he arrives, though fleet be his steed, very likely the Circassian band, having previously succeeded in reaching the river unobserved, have swept like a tempest over both fort and stanitza. An oath of fidelity which even more than any divinity awes the Circassian mind and rules it, having previously been administered on a pocket edition of the Koran to each warrior by his chief, and each one before sallying from his place of concealment in reeds, woods, or hills, having dismounted to put up with raised hands in silence a brief prayer to Allah, as well as to tighten his saddle-girths, at a given signal all spring forward like the roused lion out of his lair. Giving their horses the rein they have no need of spurs. In a moment they are across the open space which lies between their cover and the fortress, though some may have fallen from the enemy's well-aimed guns and musketry. They are at the gates; they leap the ditch; they climb the wall; they spring down into the enclosure; at the same time raising a war-cry which resembling the shrill, melancholy, and fearfully wild howl of the jackal, fills with unnatural, and even insane consternation the troops who for the first time hear it. It is now quick work, and the struggle fearful. But the agile and light-limbed mountaineers are more than a match for the heavy, slow-wilted Russians; and though in cold blood the former do not take the life of an enemy, now fury-driven they are swift to smite and never spare; while above the clash of sabres and bayonets, above the shouting and the musketry, rises the voice of the Circassian chief who leads on and deals out destruction until the last Muscovite bites the dust.
The stanitza making no resistance, the work of pillage is soon done; whereupon the troop having picked up their dead and wounded, turn their horses' heads again towards the mountains. When the Cossacks come in with their reinforcements it is too late. They are only in time to behold the stanitza in flames, the fort in ruins from the explosion of its magazines, and the victors, their cruppers piled high with goods, and women, just gaining the opposite bank, or crossing the hill-top, on the other side of which lie both safety and freedom.