as good and brave soldiers, were furious at the loss of their artillery, and by a desperate charge retook five pieces, the sixth being relinquished only because its carriage was broken. Upon the last day of the retreat, Chamyl came up with his horsemen. Had he been able to get these together two days sooner, it is doubtful whether any portion of the column would have escaped. As it was, the Russians lost nearly two thousand men; the weary and dispirited survivors re-entering Girselaul with downcast mien. Preparations had been made to celebrate their triumph, and, to add to their general's mortification, Tchernicheff was awaiting their arrival. On the prince's return to St Petersburg, both Grabbe and Golowin were removed from their commands. Against this same Tshetshen fortress of Dargo, Count Woronzoff's expedition (already referred to) was made, in July 1845. A capital account of the affair is given in a letter from a Russian officer engaged, printed in Dr Wagner's book. Dargo had become an important place. Chamyl had established large stores there, and had built a mosque, to which came pilgrims from the remotest villages of Daghestan and Lesghistan, partly to pray, partly to see the dreaded chief--equally renowned as warrior and priest--and to give him information concerning the state of the country, and the movements of the Russians. Less vigorously opposed than Grabbe, and his measures better taken, Woronzoff reached Dargo with moderate loss. "The village," says the Russian officer: "was situated on the slope of a mountain, at the brink of a ravine, and consisted of sixty to seventy small stone-houses, and of a few larger buildings, where the stones were joined with mortar, instead of being merely superimposed, as is usually the case in Caucasian dwellings. One of these buildings had several irregular towers, of some apparent antiquity. When we approached, a thick smoke burst from them. Chamyl had ordered everything to be set on fire that could not be carried away. One must confess that, in this fierce determination of the enemy to refuse submission--to defend, foot by foot, the territory of his forefathers, and to leave to the Russians no other trophies than ashes and smoking ruins--there is a certain wild grandeur which extorts admiration, even though the hostile chief be no better than a fanatical barbarian." This reminds us of the words of the Circassian chief Mansour:--"When Turkey and England abandon us," he said, to Bell of the 'Vixen,'--"when all our powers of resistance are exhausted, we will burn our houses,and our goods, strangle our wives and our children, and retreat to our highest rocks, there to die, fighting to the very last man." "The greatest difficulty," said General Neidhardt to Dr Wagner, who was a frequent visitor at the house of that distinguished officer, "with which we have to contend, is the unappeasable, deep-rooted, ineradicable hatred cherished by all the mountaineers against the Russians. For this