CHAPTER XVI.
OSMAN RIONI
Bismillah! there is but one God, and Mohammed is His prophet; and on earth He is the powerful hand of Him who moveth the stars, who giveth light to the sun, and throweth darkness on the souls of the Russian unbelievers.
I am a Circassian, and, consequently, a Mohammedan, being a native of those districts of the Caucasus which have waged a ceaseless war with Russia—I mean that portion of our mountains which lies between Tamrook and the strong fortress of Anapa, whose ramparts are washed by the waves of the Euxine Sea. We are all soldiers from our birth; thus, out of a population of three hundred thousand souls, our tribe can at any time muster fifty thousand warriors, well mounted on fleet Caucasian horses, and well armed, after our own fashion, in coats of mail, with musket, bow and pistol, sabre, dagger, and cartridge box; men, brave and handsome, and stubborn as their native rocks—men to whom danger is a pastime, and death but the door to Paradise.
Thus the mountaineers of the Caucasus, though mustering only about two millions of souls, have never stooped before a conqueror; but, in the face of all the world, have hurled back the legions of the Russian Empire, and maintained against it a struggle for fifty years—a struggle which, when our valour and disparity of numbers on one side are contrasted with the ferocity and overwhelming force on the other, has no parallel in the history of the modern world. The Russians name us the Tcherkesses, which means literally "those who bar the way;" for never did a foreign host leave their cursed foot-prints, on the summits of the Caucasus.
Our mountains have become the ramparts of Turkey and of Persia, as our Declaration of Independence asserts; but they will become—unless we are supported by Western Europe—the avenue to both! We voluntarily submitted to the khans of the Crimea, and afterwards to the sultans of Constantinople; but, alas! we have lost the chiefs, whose banners could have summoned a hundred thousand warriors; yet now are we all, as one man, united in a deep and undying hatred of Russia! She has built forts on our territory, but dare her soldiers venture a foot beyond their cannon? In short, sirs, Circassia is free and independent; for neither the lying maps of Russia, which are spread throughout the world, and which mark the Caucasus as her territory, nor words, nor arts can enslave us. Arms may do it, but the steel has never yet been forged, nor the cannon cast, that will make the proud Circassian stoop his crest before the barbarous Russ! Bismillah! The wild Tcherkesses are still free as the stormy wind that sweeps from Azov down the Euxine.
My father Mostapha was a chief; the head of one of those princely houses which are of Kabardian descent; his will was a law to his people; and the booty he took in his wars with the fierce Tartars and faithless Muscovites was the reward of their fidelity. We were Christians once—many ages ago—but it pleased God to open our eyes to the blessed precepts of Islam, and now we turn our faces to the Kaaba when we pray. Many nobles followed the banner of my father, whose territories extended along the base of the mountain steppes, from Marinskoi to the banks of the Kisselbash River; but one night, in the year 1807, the Russian General Goudivitch, with ten thousand cavalry, burst among us; stormed Anapa, and gave our men to the sword, our roofs to the flames, and our children to the wolf and the eagle.
My father fought long and nobly; the war was desperate; the Russians impaled their prisoners, and my father roasted his; but the tide of battle turned against us. All our possessions became a prey to the Russ, and our most beautiful damsels were given as wives or handmaidens to those brutal Cossacks, whom the merciless Goudivitch had brought from the banks of the Don. Azrael spread his dusky wings over our beautiful country; all the land was burned up, and black as night—being waste as a garden whose fruits have been gathered.
Then the new chain of forts was built along the Kuban. These marked the extended boundary of the Russian territory, and the land of my father was lost for ever; his bones lay unburied, where he had fallen, sword in hand, on the threshold of his own door, pierced by the same bayonets that slew his faithful wife; and their three children, myself and two brothers, sole heirs to his hopes and his harvest of vengeance, received the bread of charity from another Circassian tribe, the friendly Abassians, who dwell between the mountains and the Euxine.
Time rolled on, and from tending the flocks of the Abassians as shepherd boys, my brothers Selim and Karolyi grew strong and hardy men. The Abassians told us of our father's fate, and we longed to avenge it, and to recover our lost patrimony. Day after day we spent our time in acquiring the perfect use of arms, in talking of our hopes, our projects, and desires; and often we looked with kindling eyes towards those mountains, from whose summits the Muscovite outposts were visible by the waters of the Kuban; for dear as war and vengeance are the honour of his race and country to the proud and free Tcherkesse.