most reputable employments of youth; and they rob as much for the sake of honour as from necessity. They have heads of families without authority, and eloquence and abilities alone have any influence over them. To laws and a state of subjection they are utter strangers; and in all their transactions they are governed solely by ancient custom. The father arms his son as soon as he is able to defend himself, and then abandons him to his fate and his inclinations. The Ingusches borrow, their names from animals: thus, one is named Ust, ox; a second Chaka, hog; a third Poe, dog; and so forth. The women have still more singular appellations, for instance, Assir wachara-she who rides a calf; Ossiali wachara— she who rides a bitch, &c. Should an Ingusch be indebted to an individual belonging to any of the neighbouring tribes, and not pay him, the creditor goes to his Kunack, or guest, among the Ingusches, acquaints him with the circumstance, and solicits him to procure the payment of the debt, with this threat: "If thou dost not comply, I have brought with me a dog which I will kill upon the graves of thy family."-Every Ingusch trembles at this dreadful menace; and if the debtor denies the debt, he is obliged to swear that he does not owe it. On this occasion dogs' bones are mixed with the excrements of the same animals, and carried to the sacred rock Jerda. Here the person charged with the debt says with a loud voice, "If I deny the truth, may the dead of my family carry upon their shoulders the dead of the family of my accuser, and that too on this road when it has rained and the sun scorches!" The same ceremony takes place in charges of theft, for the Ingusches steal oftener than they lend.-If a man's son dies, another who has lost his daughter goes to the father, and says, "Thy son will want a wife in the other world; I will give him my daughter; pay me the price of the bride." Such a demand is never refused, even though the purchase of the bride amount to thirty cows. They take five and more wives, and after the father's death, the eldest son marries them all except his own mother, whom however any of his brothers may take on the same footing. When this scandalous custom is reprobated in the presence of an Ingusch, he replies, "My father lay with my mother, and why should not. I lie with his wife?" The women of the Kists and Ingusches are small, strong, and tolerably handsome; the girls, adorned with the glow of health, are very lively, inquisitive and merry creatures. Their hair in front is cut so short as to cover only half the forehead, over which they spread it with great care, making it adhere together with white lead. That on the hinder part of the head they plait in several braids, which fall over the shoulders and down the back; but married women have it done up in two braids only, each being tied with a silk, woollen or cotton fillet, which is passed round it so often that it is an inch thick near the head, and diminishes to the other extremity, which just reaches to the top of the shift, where both are tied together with a ribband. The rest of their head-dress consists of a Tscherkessian hat, which looks very well before, and brass, copper or glass ear-rings. The shift is worked at the shoulders and breast, with silk, wool or yarn of different colours, to the depth of five inches. Over it they wear a jacket which reaches to the waist and is fastened with a girdle, and under the shift long trowsers. These trowsers mark their condition; married women wear red, widows and old women blue, and young unmarried females white trowsers; but all of them are neatly worked at the ankles in a variety of colours bordered with black. In winter, females of all classes wear boots, and in summer go barefoot. When their household business is finished, they employ themselves in making carpets, or felts. They manufacture also a slight woollen stuff (Zoka), which serves to clothe themselves as well as their husbands and children. and conclude with the same ge neral antics with which they began. That the fair sex may not be de prived of this diversion, they seek some blind musician with whom they may amuse themselves in some spot at a distance from the men, without violating the custom which enjoins them to conceal their persons from strangers of the other sex. The art of writing is considered by the Ingusches as a miracle wrought by the Christian and Mohammedan religions in favour of their professors; they nevertheless continue averse to those religions, though the Russian missionaries employed by the Ossetian Commission took great pains to convert them to the Greek church. Two brothers of this nation were sold as slaves to the Turks, embraced the Mohammedan faith, visited Mecca, and at length recovered their liberty. Returning to their native land, they found their mother yet alive, and, having Their method of dancing seems converted her, began to preach peculiar to themselves, as it is not with pious zeal against the veto be met with among the other neration paid by their countrymen inhabitants of the Caucasus, A to rocks. "Ye preach a docparty sitting down in a large circle trine," said the Ingusches to them, sing, and accompanied by haut-which ye learned while slaves; boys or bagpipes challenge the we'll have nothing to do with it; youngest and ablest dancers to therefore begone, and never show show their activity. Such as choose your faces here again." The two then throw themselves into a va- brothers withdrew unmolested to riety of dangerous postures, and another country; a proof that the perform all sorts of antics, one religion of the Ingusches is far after another. When all the more tolerant than the Christian. dancers have taken their turn, amidst loud and general plaudits, they join hands, sing, and dance in long files. They frequently form with great dexterity in one large cirle, open and close again, The religion of the Ingusches is extremely simple; for they wor ship one God, whom they name Däle, but no saints or other illustrious persons. They celebrate Sunday, not by religious worship, but by rest from labour. In spring they observe a long fast, and in summer one of shorter duration. They have no particular customs either at the birth or death of man, but annually perform general pilgrimages to holy places, most of which are remains of Christian churches erected in the time of the celebrated Georgian queen Thamar, who reigned from A. D. 1171 to 1198, subdued most of the Caucasians, and converted them to Greek Christianity. On such occasions they make offerings of sheep, beer, and other things. An old man of known sanctity, whom they term Zanin stag, or pure man, who is their only priest, and unmarried, has alone the right to offer sacrifices and prayers at the holy places. A festival of this kind is celebrated with a general feast upon the animals sacrificed. Of Christianity they retain nothing but a veneration for ancient churches, and a contempt for the Mohammedan religion. Those who resided nearest to the plain of the Kabardah suffered themselves to be baptized in the time of the Russian missionaries, but since the suppression of the Ossetian commission this has totally ceased. On the south side of the valley of the Ingusches that has just been described, upon an eminence at whose foot the two arms of the Assai unite, and on the right arm, is an ancient building, the object of the great annual pilgrimages of the whole nation. The Zanin stag, or holy old man, resides near it, and slaughters the animals presented for sacrifice, which are consumed by the pilgrims; the head, horns, and bones only being preserved in the building. The latter is partly sunk in the earth, and is twenty-three paces in length, seven in breadth, and eighteen feet in height. It is built of smooth hewn stone, but the roof has fallen in. On the west and east side is to be seen a small court-yard. The entrance by a gate was on the west side, but is now blocked up with stones: the present entrance is by a low door on the south side. Over the principal entrance are some rude figures cut in stone in alto relievo. A man is represented sitting on a chair, and over him on the left a hand proceeds from the clouds holding a rule; by his side stands another figure holding a cross in the left hand and a sabre in the right. On the other side another figure is carrying bunches of grapes on a pole over his shoulder; at the side are heads of cherubs, which are also introduced by way of ornament at the corners. Over the principal figure is seen the façade of a Greek church; but the ancient Georgian inscriptions, which Pallas has mistaken for Gothic, are now wholly illegible. on the east side of the building are two narrow windows, and in the south wall small triangular. holes are left instead of windows. The interior of the edifice is dark, dirty, and without pavement; and in the middle is a heap of ashes accumulated from the sacrifices. Heads with horns, bones, and broken arrows, are laid up against the sides. On the east side are some arches walled up with stone, which are said to communicate with vaults where books and other articles belonging to the church are deposited. These places the Ingusches will not suffer any person to explore. During my second visit to Mosdok, however, I procured two tattered Greek manuscripts on the Liturgy, on smooth cotton paper, which had been brought away by a Capuchin missionary who had once penetrated to the country of the Ingusches: they properly belonged to the Catholic mission, but were exchanged with me by the Jesuits for some other books of more utility to them. The Great Ingusches are much more hospitable and sociable with strangers than those residing on the Assai, and have borrowed their manners and customs from the Ossetes and Tscherkessians. At entertainments the host always waits upon his guests, and eats only what the latter throw to him. He sets before them the head and breast at once; of these each is expected to partake, but the ears are allotted to the boy to remind him of the duty of obedience. After eating the flesh, they drink the broth. They squat round in a circle to the repast, at which they use nothing but their fingers. Their burial-places are vaults of masonry above-ground, with a small aperture on the west side by which the corpse is introduced; it is afterwards closed with stones, and the women fasten it with the braids of their hair. For persons killed by lightning, they erect poles to which they attach the head and extended skin of a goat. Respecting the time of their settlement in the country which they now inhabit they are totally ig norant; but the ruined church on the northern hills, at which those offer sacrifice who do not go on pilgrimage to that just described, evinces a pretty high antiquity. Their flocks and herds are considerable, and they have a good breed of horses. The more opulent let their cattle, and find this method both safer and more advantageous. Ten sheep with ten lambs yield every three years, a profit of eight head, so that the owner must receive back twentyeight head. Should the farmer have the misfortune to lose the sheep, he pays a cow every three years in their stead, till he can return the proper number. For a cow with a calf, a sheep is annually given; and for a mare a cow, together with half the foals she drops; or in teu years three sheep, the mare with foal, and half the foals dropped during that time. This practice has the authority of a tacit law among these people. For a certain tribute also they take the indigent and defenceless under their protection. They observe the great fasts of the Greek church, but that is the extent of their knowledge of Christianity. On these occasions they perform their pilgrimages to the holy places, and after harvest to the cavern with the iron cross. They relate many extraordinary stories concerning these sanctuaries; and, among the rest, of a vault in the valley of Schalcha, which is built of stone. Here a passage is said to lead through nine doors to a cavern, where large books, a gold candlestick, a chest full of valuables, and a man and woman are preserved sound and uninjured. CHARACTER OF GREEKS. [From F. C. Pouqueville's Travels in the Morea, Albania, and other Parts of the Ottoman Empire.] THE MOREAN Miltiades and Cimon, bowed down under the two-fold despotism of the Turks and their papas, are wholly incapable of conceiving, or prosecuting, an enterprise of that bold and generous nature requisite to afford a prospect of their restoration to the political situation the country once enjoyed. The modern Greeks, I cannot, alas! hesitate to say it, would see nothing in a revolution but the triumph of their religion, without concerning themselves about political liberty. I must add, that if they hate the Turks, they detest much more, astonishing as it may seem, the Christians who acknowledge the authority of the Pope. This fact is so certain, that the Greeks, if asked who they are, always answer Christians, in the fear that they should be taken for Papists. This hatred of Roman catholics is cherished by their papas, who are continually talking of the maledictions uttered by the Pope against all who are not his disciples, and telling dismal stories of the Greeks that die among the Latins being deprived of the rights of sepulture. The Morean Greeks, or inhabitants of the Morea, are strong made, robust, and distinguished by a cast of features full of expression, yet, as I have observed, evidently debased by slavery. Endowed naturally with strong talents, which by circumstances are diverted from taking a course that would render them at once useful and ornamental to society, they are profound dissemblers, crafty and vain: extremely addicted to talking, little dependence is to be placed upon what they say entertaining no scruples of perjuring themselves, they scarcely utter a word, or traf fic for the most trifling article, without invoking a whole legion of saints as witnesses to their probity. Gay, lively, inclined to dissipation, they make themselves agreeable, as companions, without inspiring confidence; possessing active imaginations, their language abounds with ornament, with figures, with metaphors, with similes: if they talk of liberty, it is in a strain of exaggeration which would make one believe that they are ready to undertake any thing, to make any sacrifices in the pursuit of it; yet it is too evident that the indignation they manifest against their oppressors, arises less from the desire of enfranchisement than from that of seeing their own mode of worship the predominant one. It is but too evident what is to be expected of people actuated by such an ambition. The descendants of year The Morean women have undoubtedly a claim to the prize of beauty, perhaps also to the palm of virtue. They may probably owe the first advantage to physical causes not difficult to be assigned. During the greater part of the the sun warms the Morea with its benignant rays: the air is free from all humidity, and charged with the perfume of thousands of flowers, is pure and vivifying, while the temperature is mild and serene as in our finest days of spring. If to this be added the moderate share of labour to which the women of the East are sub |