enter Circassia, "you are at once agreeably impressed with the decided improvement in the appearance of the population, the agriculture, and the beauty of their flocks and herds[1]." With respect to Dioscurias, we are informed, that "the memory of its ancient name is still preserved in the present appellation of Iskouriah[2]." Sir John Chardin, who visited it and calls it Isgaour, commends its safety in summer as a road for ships, but says that it is a complete desert, where he could obtain no provisions, the traders who anchor there being obliged to construct temporary huts and booths of the boughs of trees for their accommodation, whilst awaiting the arrival of the natives of Mingrelia and Caucasus[3].
But, besides the general inference that the Coraxi occupied part of the modern Circassia, we are able to determine their abode with still greater precision, and even obtain some insight into their distinctive characters as a nation.
At the south-eastern extremity of Chirkess, or Circassia, on the northern declivity of Mount Elborus, and about the sources of the Kuban, the ancient Hypanis, we find a mountain clan, consisting of rather more than 250 families, which appears to retain not only the manners and habits, but even the very name of the Coraxi. Julius von Klaproth, to whom we are principally indebted for our knowledge of them, calls them the Caratshai[4]. From him we learn the following particulars respecting their appearance, manners, and employments. They
- ↑ Travels in Circassia, &c. in 1835, by Edmund Spencer, Esq., vol. ii. p. 355. Julius von Klaproth, in the work quoted below, says, (p. 582.), that the wealth of the Circassians consists principally in their sheep, from whose wool the women make coarse cloth and felt. In the summer they drive their sheep into the mountains, but feed them under cover in winter, and at other times in the plains.
- ↑ Dr. Goodenough, in Journal of the Royal Geographical Society, vol. i. p. 110. See also Major Rennell's Map of Western Asia.
- ↑ Chardin's Travels, vol i. p. 77. 108. of the English Translation. London, 1686.
- ↑ Reise in den Caucasus, cap. 24. The author thus spells the name in German characters, Ckaratschai. Father Lamberti, a missionary from the Society of the Propaganda at Naples, who remained twenty years in that part of Asia in the seventeenth century, calls them "i Caraccioli," in which name we observe the addition of an Italian termination. See his Relatione della Colchide, hoggi delta Mengrelia, Napoli, 1654, cap. 28. p. 196.
