Once, or at most twice, in the year, the Imam retires to some remote cave, or shuts himself up in his most private apartments, and a strong cordon of watchful Murtosigators prevents any person whatever from having access to him. In this solitude he spends three weeks--fasting, praying, and reading the Koran. On the evening of the last day of his seclusion, the principal Mollahs and Murids, accompanied by a host of pilgrims, gathered in high expectation about the holy place, are summoned to meet him. He tells them that Mohammed has appeared to him in the form of a dove, revealing the mysteries of the faith, laying upon him such and such commands, and encouraging him to persevere in the holy war. Then showing himself to the throng without, he addresses them with the eloquence for which he is famed, rousing to the highest pitch their religious devotion and their hatred against the Muscovites. The whole assembly now joins in a solemn hymn. The men draw their schaskas, renew their oath to defend the faith and to destroy the Russians, and then disperse, shouting, “God is great! Mohammed is his first prophet, and Schamyl his second!” The total population of the Caucasus does not exceed a million and a half, and Schamyl’s rule does not extend over more than six hundred thousand souls. The force under his command at any time, even taking the Russian accounts, has never surpassed twenty thousand men. In the last ten years the Russian army of the Caucasus has consisted of more than one hundred and fifty thousand men, provided with every appliance of modern warfare, flanked right and left by sea-coasts commanded by their own cruisers, and directed by a government utterly regardless of human life. Fevers and Caucasian bullets are said to cost the Russians twenty thousand men yearly; and when the Czar sends a political offender into the ranks of the recruits for the Caucasus, he does not expect to see him again. The Russian ordnance accounts for the year 1840, show an expenditure of 11,344 artillery cartridges, and 1,206,575 musket cartridges! The people of the Caucasus are said to have a legend that some day a powerful Sultan will arise in the West, and finally deliver them from the hands of the Muscovite padischah.