Tcherkask, their next station, which in spring was mostly under water, seemed in some degree to resemble Venice. It was, in the opinion of our travellers, one of the most singular towns in the world, where, in the season of the inundation, the communication between one house and another was preserved by a kind of balcony or gallery, raised on wooden pillars, and running along the streets on both sides. From hence they continued their journey along the banks of the Kuban and the frontiers of Circassia, having in view the wild range of the Caucasus, with vast forests of oak at its roots. The population of these districts, fierce marauding mountaineers, beheld with regret the efforts which were making by the Russian government to wean them from their sanguinary habits. Their whole delight consisted in bloodshed and plunder. But their frays had gradually become less and less frequent: “Formerly,” said their guide, “we were ourselves a terror to our neighbours--but we are now,” added he with a sigh--“a civilized people!” “The land on the Russian side of the river (Kuban),” says Heber, “is but scantily wooded; on the southern side it rises in a magnificent theatre of oak woods, interspersed with cultivated ground, and the smoke of villages, with the ridges of Caucasus above the whole. The nearest hills are by no means gigantic; but there are some white peaks which rise at a vast distance, and which proved to us that these were only the first story of the mountain.” Our travellers now traversed the Crimea, and proceeded across a stepp intersected by numerous streams, inlets of the sea, and some large salt-water lakes, to Odessa, an interesting town, which in the opinion of Heber owed its prosperity to the administration of the Duc de Richelieu far more than to any natural advantages. Their route now lay across Russian Poland, Hungary, Austria, and Northern Germany. They arrived at Yarmouth on the 14th of October, 1806, and Heber immediately set forward to join the family circle at Hodnet, where he enjoyed the satisfaction which every wanderer feels when returning, after a long and toilsome journey, to his native home.