procession, to the others, till, after having gone round them all, it was conveyed to the vicinity of the Gerrhus, where a large square pit was dug, in which was deposited not only the royal corpse, but also the golden goblets used at the royal table, the ministers of the king, his principal wife, and his horse, all of whom were slain on the occasion. A great quantity of earth was then heaped over the whole, till it became an immense tumulus, the size of which was still augmented by a fresh accession of earth the following year.'-p. 391.

Our limits will not allow us to follow Dr. Henderson in his route through Tcherkask, nor to notice any part of his account of the Don Cossacks, of whose history and manners many details will be found in one of our early Numbers.* Neither shall we think it necessary to accompany him along the north-west shores of the Caspian to Mosdoff, and from thence across the Caucasus to Teflis, as his remarks on these interesting countries are rather jejune, and the pages he gives to them chiefly occupied with the condition of missions, the merits of translations of the Scriptures, and dissertations on Biblical literature. We wish, moreover, to preserve room for a more copious guide in these southern parts of the Russian empire, whose work stands second at the head of this Article. We shall therefore take leave of Dr. Henderson, after briefly noticing some two or three societies, whom a community of feeling on matters of religion has collected together, under a government which has at least this merit, that all opinions, however extravagant, are not only tolerated by it, but protected.

At Sarepta, on the Volga, is an establishment of Moravian Brethren, founded in the year 1765, by the special favour of the Empress Catharine. A mineral spring at a short distance from the settlement soon became a source of great prosperity to this society, in consequence of the increased number of visitors which now frequented it in search of health, and the improved accommodations which the brethren had the good sense to supply. Several companies of brethren and sisters joined the original settlers, and the establishment grew rapidly under their hands, far, indeed, beyond what had originally been projected. They accordingly erected dwelling-houses, mills, tanneries, and distilleries; planted orchards, yineyards, and culinary gardens; and brought into operation an extensive system of agriculture. The town is regularly laid out, according to the plan of the Brethren's towns in Germany, with wide streets; a fine large square, with a fountain in the centre; a capacious place of worship; the houses belonging to the elders, the unmarried brethren, sisters, and widows, and those occupied by the different families, together with the workshops for the different handi

* Quarterly Rev. Vol. IV.

crafts

crafts carried on in the place. Fine tall poplars line the streets, and ornament the square; and the vineyards and gardens give it an appearance most enchanting to the eye that has been accustomed to wander in vain in quest of a single bush for hundreds of versts in the surrounding steppe.'-Henderson, p. 411.

We are grieved to find, from a note of the author, that this flourishing settlement has, since his visit, been almost entirely destroyed by fire. As to their missionary efforts, for the conversion of the Pagan Calmucks in their vicinity, our traveller describes the Sarepta mission as having been wholly unproductive ;—with the exception of a few young girls, who' gave encouraging evidences of a work of the spirit of God in their souls,' they did not appear to have made any converts.

At the foot of one of the Caucasian ridges, a little to the westward of Georgievsk, is situated the Scotch Colony' of Karass. This mission was established by Messrs. Brunton and Paterson, in 1802, since which time it has been joined by several German settlers, and the whole are protected from the depredations of the mountaineers by a party of Cossacks. The object seems to have been the conversion of the Mahommedan Tartars, in which, it is admitted, no progress has as yet been made. One reason of this failure, Dr. Henderson supposes, is the missionaries' ignorance of the Arabic language, and consequent want of a critical knowledge of the Koran. What,' says he, should we think of a Mahommedan Effendi, who should settle in any part of Scotland, and attempt to convince the inhabitants that the doctrines of the Bible were false, and yet know nothing of the languages in which it was written?' One of the missionaries, however, he exempts from this censure. Before Mr. Henry Brunton had been two years at Karass, he, we are told, was able to undertake the translation of the New Testament into the Turkish language; and the extraordinary difficulties he had to encounter could only, says the writer, have been overcome by that Divine Agent who worketh inwardly in his servants.'

The place at which he was stationed, the character of the surrounding tribes, the unsettled state of public affairs, the distance to which the missionaries were removed from the necessary materials of typographical labour, the embarrassments in which they were fre quently involved, and the limited and continually interrupted intervals of time which could be devoted to the work, all tend to excite our admiration of the manner of its execution. The houses erected in the colony were by no means of a substantial or comfortable nature; and the printing-office, in particular, was so superficially constructed, that during the frost in winter, a trough of water, used for wetting the paper, though placed close to the stove, froze into a solid mass in the course of twenty-four hours, and all the iron-work of the

press

press was white with frost. The cold prevented the ink from spreading properly, owing to which, and similar causes, the execution of the press-work was very indifferent. Being often alarmed by the Tcherkessians, the missionaries were obliged to secure the types by interring them. Add to this, that the workmen were continually changing, so that they never rose higher than learners; and it may safely be affirmed, that there never was an edition of the New Testament, or of any other book, carried through the press under such a multitude of untoward circumstances.'-Henderson, pp. 422, 423.

While we are ready to admire the perseverance of the good man who had to struggle against these difficulties, we cannot but feel a something like mortification, that so much labour should have been thrown away, and that Mr. Brunton's ingenuity should not have been exercised on matters that would have been more useful to himself and to society at large. His version, if it was worthy of being printed at all, might have been printed elsewhere; and to attempt anything of the kind at Karass was about as wise a scheme, as it would be to rear silk-worms at Inverness.Another branch of the same mission is resident among the Ingush, a numerous tribe beyond the Terek, inhabiting the deep valleys of the mountains behind Vladikavkaz. These are represented by Mr. Blythe, the missionary, as an extraordinary people; they believe in the existence of a God, as a pure spirit, whom they call Dallé; in a plurality of demons, who sometimes assume a visible shape, and appear as armed men, with their feet inverted; in the immortality of the soul; the resurrection of the body; and the temporary punishment of the wicked in a future state. From the great veneration in which they hold the ruins of churches and monasteries in the Caucasus, and their adoration of the images which are still visible on their walls, it is supposed they are the descendants of the early Georgian Christians. Gamba, following Klaproth, says they are not Mussulmans and have ceased to be Christians, though they retain certain ceremonies adopted at the time of the celebrated Thamar, Queen of Georgia, who reigned in the year 1198. All these authors give the Ingush an excellent character for industry and intelligence. They always go armed, and for the protection of their villages against the incursions of the Kabardian mountaineers, they have built, at short intervals, castles or towers of defence,' the entrances to which are, as in our Martello towers, near the summit, and reached by means of a ladder, which can be drawn up so as to cut off all communication. These towers are kept well stored with stones and other missiles.—But foreign feuds are not all they have;there are frequent broils among the people themselves, and they practise a bloody revenge of personal injuries.

The

The missionaries were acquainted with a young man of an amiable disposition, who was worn down almost to a skeleton, by the constant dread in which he lived, of having avenged upon him a murder committed by his father before he was born. He can reckon up more than a hundred persons who consider themselves bound to take away his life, whenever a favourable opportunity shall present itself. There is scarcely a house in which there is not one implicated in something of this nature, on which account they never appear without a loaded gun and sword. They also wear a shield, made of wood or strong leather, and surrounded on the outside with iron, in the use of which they are very expert.'-Henderson, p. 495.

Mr. Blythe, it seems, had made great progress in the Ingush dialect, and, what was still better, had succeeded completely in gaining the esteem and affection of these poor people; but he had scarcely been there a year, when he unexpectedly received orders from the governor-general to quit the place. No reason is assigned for this interruption of missionary intercourse—a thing unusual in any portion of the Russian empire; and Dr. Henderson speaks with great indignation against the man who could thus wilfully shut the door through which the gospel was about to enter, to deliver the poor benighted Ingush from all the horrors of their pagan state. We cannot, however, help suspecting that there was some very sufficient reason for this act of the Russian government -an act which is to be lamented on more grounds than Dr. Henderson would perhaps deign to consider, if it be true, as Guldenstaedt states, that a person who is venerated as a kind of Ingush high priest, has his habitation in the mountains, near an ancient stone church, said to be adorned with various statues and inscriptions;' and that under the church is a vault that contains certain old books, which, however, no one ever attempts to approach.'

It

In the vicinity of Teflis is a colony of German Millenarians, who, in the years 1816 and 1817, emigrated chiefly from Wiirtemburg, influenced, as it is said, by the conviction that the second coming of Christ, and the millennium, were near at hand. seems that an author, of the name of Stilling, whose works are said to be much read in that part of Germany, had stated that the countries near the Caspian Sea are those wherein Christ's visible reign will begin; and these poor deluded fanatics, taking this in a literal sense, being joined by some adventurers of a depraved character, whose only expectation was that of leading an easy life without working, assembled together, and set out by the Donau, on their way to Odessa. At their first outset they are supposed to have amounted to fifteen hundred families; but about twothirds died on the Donau and in the quarantines, of the ague or

plague ;

plague; and it is stated that, long before reaching Odessa, the union of the remnant was broken by internal dissensions. Some of the leading men considered that the nearer they got to Jerusalem and the Holy Land, the sooner they would experience the blessings of the millennium,-which, say they, will certainly commence in the year 1836. Others, again, were of a different opinion; but equally certain that something disastrous was about to happen to this globe of ours-nothing short of a second deluge-this party thought the grand object should be to settle as near as possible to Mount Ararat, on the summit of which the faithful and chosen Stillingites might save themselves. As Georgia was well situated to answer the purposes of both sets of seers, the whole band set out from Odessa to cross the Caucasus, and seven villages in Georgia are now occupied by the few survivors of this crazy expedition.

Some of these details are deplorable enough; but sheer imbecility of intellect is often as pregnant with extraordinary freaks as the most distorted imagination; and while on the subject of sectarians, we may just mention one story which is not found in Dr. Henderson's book, and which would have furnished an admirable addition to the catalogue of Russian enormities recorded by the two disappointed and irascible travellers, the Doctors Clarke and Lyall. We give it, as we find it, in the words of the Chevalier Gamba, who, after speaking of the Russian dissenters, says,—

'Mais quelle distance entre la vie d'anchorète des Raskolniks, entre cette exaltation qui détermine à l'abstinence de tous les plaisirs, et le fanaticisme horrible qui a réuni en une secte nouvelle des hommes qui consentent à une entière mutilation! Cette secte, dont la création ne date que de peu d'années, a fait des progrès bien au-delà de ce qu'on pourroit croire. Ma plume se refuse à tracer les détails des cérémonies qui accompagnent un si affreux sacrifice. D'ordinaire, une vieille femme est chargée des fonctions de sacrificateur: cependant ces sectaires, conservant quelques sentimens d'humanité au milieu de leur barbarie, sont parvenus à éviter qu'aucun danger n'accompagne cette mutilation.

Il paroît qu'ils fondent leur doctrine sur un verset de l'Evangile qui dit que si votre oeil vous donne une mauvaise pensée, vous devez l'arracher; et sur une passage de la Bible, où il est question du bonheur des eunuques. Un homme digne de toute confiance me disoit qu'ayant demandé à un employé de la chancellerie d'Odessa, qui faisoit partie de cette secte, comment il avoit pu se porter à un attentat si douloureux sur lui-même, celui-ci répondit avec un sourire effrayant : Vous ne savez pas ce que c'est que de chasser l'esprit malin." On a voulu, il y a environ huit ans, punir ces sectaires par l'exil en Sibérie: chacun d'eux a envié le martyre, et il a fallu fermer les yeux sur une secte dont la publicité pouvoit favoriser les progrès déjà trop étendus, surtout parmi les marins de la flotte impériale.'-Gamba, ii. pp. 418, 419.

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This Chevalier Gamba, consul to the king of France at Teflis, having

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