The image of my beautiful Basilia--for I assure you, gentlemen, that the Circassian maid is the most perfect and lovely creation of God--a prisoner, a slave on board of a slave ship, and consigned a helpless victim of the lust of the licentious Osmanli filled my soul with a horror so great that I forgot my present situation in my anxiety to discover this secret ship, to free her, and to put to the edge of the sword all who were concerned in a transaction so infamous. I saw the whole affair now. The loss of the rich argosy on the Isle of Serpents had brought the difficulties of Abdallah to a crisis, and to retrieve his broken fortune he had sold his only daughter to the Turks! I invoked the curse of the Prophet, and of the twelve Imaums on his avarice; and now my only fear was great that the Turks might launch their boat and escape me: thus it was that with an ardour such as I never thought to feel at the head of Russian troops, I rode from the camp at the head of fifty hussars, with my two brothers by my side; and we galloped along the sea-shore, with all our brilliant appointments glittering in the splendour of the setting sun of Asia. "Basilia, my pure, my beautiful! this night may make thee mine," thought I; "one stroke of a sabre may give what thy father would not have sold to me, perhaps, for a million of piastres." I am ashamed to own that our Circassian beauties too often exchange with joy the penury of their fathers' cottages and the hardships of their frugal mountain homes, for the luxury and delight of the Stambouli Kiosks and seraglios. From early childhood their ears are filled, and their warm imaginations fired, with ideas of the riches and pleasure of these places, and by the stories of their mothers, or more generally their aunts, who have returned (when their Osmanli lords grew weary of their faded charms) loaded with magnificent jewels, with purses of sequins, and wardrobes of the richest stuffs the world can produce, and with many a tale to tell of the distinguished part they had played by their native superiority of intellect over the ponderous and dreamy Asiatic. To purchase our girls the Turkish vessels row by night along the shore, and seek some wooded creek where they lie concealed from the steamers and cruisers of the Russian Black Sea fleet, and from the squadrons of Cossack row-boats attached to the Kreposts; then the bargain is concluded, and the girls, who are always the most beautiful daughters of serfs and freemen, are embarked, after a month, perhaps, has been spent in bartering and chaffering between the merchants on one hand, and their parents on the other.* * It is calculated that one vessel out of six is taken. In the winter of 1843-4, twenty-eight ships left the coast of Asia Minor for Circassia, to purchase girls; twenty-three returned safely; three only were burned by the Russians, and two were swallowed by the waves.--WAGNER