VALES OF CIRCASSIA.
Circassia, the land of beauty and oppression, whose noble valleys
produce such miracles of female loveliness, and whose level plains
are the vivid scenes of such terrible struggles; where a brave,
unconquerable peasantry have, for a very long period, defied the
combined powers of the whole of Russia, and whose daughters, though
the children of such brave sires, are yet taught and reared from
childhood to look forward to a life of slavery in a Turkish harem as
the height of their ambition--Circassia, the land of bravery, beauty
and romance, is one of the least known, but most interesting spots
in all Europe.
Whether it be that the genial air of its hills and vales possesses
power to beautify the forms and faces of its daughters, or that they
inherit those charms from their ancestors by right of blood, we may
not say; but from the farthest dates, it has ever supplied the
Sultan and his people with the lovely beings who have rendered of
the harems of the Mussulmen so celebrated for the charms they
enshrine. Its daughters have been the mothers of the highest
dignitaries of the courts, and Sultan Mahomet himself was born of a
Circassian mother.
Unendowed with mental culture, Providence has seemed, in a degree,
to compensate to the girls of Circassia for want of intellectual
brilliancy, by rendering them physically beautiful almost beyond
description. No wonder, then, educated, or rather uneducated as they
are, that the visions of their childhood, the dreams of their
girlish days, and even the aspirations of their riper years, should
be in the anticipation of a life of independence, luxury and love,
in those fairy-like homes that skirt the Bosphorus at Constantinople.
Being from their earliest childhood taught by their parents to look
upon this destiny as an enviable one, these fair girls do not fail
to appreciate and fully realize the captivating charms that Heaven
has so liberally endowed them with, and wait with trembling breasts
and hopeful hearts for the period when they shall change the humble
scenes of their existence, from the long and rugged ravines of the
Caucasus, for the glittering and gaudy palaces of the Mussulmen, in
the Valley of Sweet Waters, or on the banks of the Golden Horn.
In former years, the Trebizond merchantman took on board his cargo
of young and lovely Circassians, and navigated the Black Sea with a
flowing sheet and a flag flying at his peak, which told his business
and the commerce that he was engaged in; now the trade is
contraband, and the slave ship has to pick its way cautiously about
the island of Crimea, and keep a sharp lookout to avoid the Russian
war steamers that skirt the entire coast, and keep up a
never-ceasing blockade from the Georgian shore to the ancient port
of Anapa.
This latter place was, for centuries, one of vital importance to the
Circassians, being their general depot or rendezvous for the trade
between themselves and the ports that lay at the other extreme of
the Black Sea. It was the point where they were always sure to find
a ready market for their females, receiving as payment in exchange
from the Turks, fire-arms, ammunition and gold. But at last the
Russians, assuming a virtue that did not actuate them, stormed and
took the fort, ostensibly to put a stop to this trade, as opposed to
the principles it involved, but in reality to stop the supplies that
enabled the brave mountaineers to oppose them so successfully.
In the country lying immediately back of Anapa, there is a
succession of hills and vales of surpassing loveliness, presenting
the extremes of wild and rugged mountain scenery, joining fertile
plains and beautiful valleys, where, among fragrant and luxuriant
groves, many a fair creature has grown up to be brought to the slave
market and sold for a price. Vales where brave and stalwart youths
have been nurtured and taught the dexterous use of arms, being ever
educated to look upon the Russians as their natural enemies, and
also to believe that any revenge exercised upon their Moscovite
neighbors was not only commendable, but holy and just.
In a valley opening towards the north, a short league above the port
of Anapa, at the time of our story there dwelt two families, named
Gymroc and Adegah. Both these families traced their ancestry back to
noble chiefs, who, in the days of Circassian glory and independence,
were at the head of large and powerful tribes of their countrymen.
These families, from the fact that they were thus descended, were
still held by the mountaineers who lived about them in reverence,
and their words had double weight in council when important subjects
were discussed; and indeed the present head of each was often chosen
to lead them on to the almost constantly recurring battles and
bloody guerilla contests that transpired between the mountaineers
and their enemies, the Russian Cossacks.
The family of Gymroc was blessed with a fair daughter, an only
child, who, though living among a people who were so universally
endowed with loveliness in their gentler sex, was famed for her
transcendent loveliness far and near, and the youths of the
neighboring valleys and plains sighed in their hearts to think that
the fairest flower in all Circassia was but blooming to shed its
ripened fragrance and loveliness in the harem of some dark and
bearded Mahometan, to be the toy of some rich and heartless Turk.
One there was among the young mountaineers, Aphiz Adegah, whose
whole life and soul seemed bound up in the lovely Komel, as she was
called. Neither was more than eighteen; indeed Komel was not so old,
for but sixteen full summers had passed over her head. They had
grown up together from very childhood, played together, worked
together, sharing each other's burthens, and mutually aiding each
other; now quietly watching the sheep and goats upon the hillsides,
and now working side by side in the fields, content and happy, so
they were always together.
Komel was almost too beautiful. With every grace and delicacy of
outline that has, for centuries, rendered her sex so famed in her
native land, she added also a sweet, natural intelligence, which,
though all uncultivated, was yet ever beaming from her eyes, and
speaking forth from her face. Her form possessed a most captivating
voluptuous fullness, without once trespassing upon the true lines of
female delicacy. Her large and lustrous eyes were brilliant yet
plaintive, her lips red and full, and the features generally of a
delicate Grecian cast. Her hair was of that dark, glossy hue, that
defies comparison, and was heavy and luxuriant in its fullness.
Some one has said that no one can write real poetry until he has
known the sting of unhappiness; and sure it is that beauty ever
lacks that moss-rose finish that tender melancholy throws about it,
until it has known what sorrow is. Komel had been called to mourn,
and melancholy had thrown about her a gentle glow of plaintiveness,
as a grateful angel added another grace to the rose that had
sheltered its slumber, by a shroud of moss.
While she was yet but a little child, her only brother, but little
older than herself, and whom she loved with all the sisterly
tenderness of her young heart, had strayed away from home to the
seaside, and been drowned. From that day she had sorrowed for his
loss, and even now as memory recalled her early playmate, the tears
would dim her eyes, nor did her spirits seem ever entirely free from
the grief that had imbued them at her brother's loss. This hue of
tender melancholy was in Komel only an additional beauty, as we have
said, and lent its witchery to her other charms.
To say that Komel was insensible to all her personal advantages
would be unreasonable, and supposing her not possessed of an
ordinary degree of perception. She knew that she was fair, nay, that
she was more beautiful than any of the youthful companions of her
native valley; but whatever others might have anticipated for her,
she had never looked forward, as nearly all of her sex do, in
Circassia, to a splendid foreign home across the Black Sea. No, no;
her young and loving heart had already made its choice of him she
had so long and tenderly loved,--him who had stepped in when there
was that vacant spot in her heart that her brother's loss had left,
and filled it; for he had been both brother and lover to her from
the tenderest years of childhood. They had probably thought little
upon the subject of their relation to each other, and had said less,
until Komel was nearly sixteen, and then it was only in that tender
and hopeful strain of a happy future, and that future to be shared
by each other.
Aphiz was as noble and generous in spirit as he was handsome in
person. Nature had cast him in a sinewy, yet graceful form; his
native mountain air and vigorous habits had ripened his physical
developments to an early manliness and already had he more than once
charged the enemy upon the open plains of his native land. His
falchion had glanced in the tide of battle, and his stout arm had
dealt many a fatal blow to the Cossack forces, that sought to
conquer and possess themselves of all Circassia. It was a stern
school for the young mountaineer, and it was well, as he grew up in
this manner, that there was always the tender and chastening
association before his mind, of his love for the gentle and
beautiful girl who had given her young heart into his keeping. He
needed such promptings to enable him to combat the rough
associations of the camp, and the hardening duty of a soldier in
time of war.
It was, therefore, to her side that he came for that true happiness
that emanates from the better feelings of the heart; by her side
that he enjoyed the quiet but grand scenery of their native hills
and valleys, looking, as it were, through each other's eyes at every
beauty, either of thought or that lay tangible before them.
Though both Komel and Aphiz had been thrice happy in their constant
intercourse in the days of childhood, though those days, so well
remembered, had been to them like a pleasant morning filled with
song, or the gliding on of a summer stream, and were marked only by
truthfulness and peaceful content, still both realized as they now
entered upon a riper age of youth, that they were far happier than
ever before, that they loved each other better, and all things about
them. It is an error to suppose that childhood is the happiest
period of life, though philosophers tell us so, for a child's
pleasures are like early spring flowers--pretty, but pale, and
fleeting, and scentless. The rich and fragrant treasures of the
heart are not developed so early; they come with life's summer, and
thus it was with these Circassian youths.
Growing up daily and hourly together to that period when love holds
strongest sway over the heart, both felt how happily they could
kneel before Heaven and be pronounced one and inseparable; but Aphiz
was poor and had no home to offer a bride, besides which, the
character of the times was sufficient to prevent their more prudent
parents from yielding their consent to such an arrangement as their
immediate union, though they offered no opposition to their
intimacy.
Komel was of such a happy and cheerful disposition at heart that she
scattered pleasure always about her, but Aphiz's very love rendered
him thoughtful and perhaps at times a little melancholy; for he
feared that some future chance might in an unforeseen, way rob him
of her who was so ineffably dear to him. He did not exactly fear
that Komel's parents would sell her to go to Constantinople, though
they were now, since war and pestilence had swept away lands, home
and title, poor enough; and yet there was an undefined fear ever
acting in his heart as to her he loved. Sometimes when he realized
this most keenly, he could not help whispering his forebodings to
Komel herself.
"Nay, dear Aphiz," she would say to him, with a gentle smile upon
her countenance, "let not that shadow rest upon thy brow, but rather
look with the sun on the bright side of everything. Am I not a
simple and weak girl, and yet I am cheerful and happy, while thou,
so strong, so brave and manly, art ever fearing some unknown ill."
"Only as it regards thee, Komel, do I fear anything."
"That's true, but I should inspire thee with joy, not fear and
uneasiness."
"It is only the love I bear thee, dearest, that makes me so jealous,
so anxious, so fearful lest some chance should rob me of thee
forever," he would reply tenderly.
"It is ever thus; what is there to fear, Aphiz?"
"I know not, dearest. No one feared your gentle brother's loss years
ago, and yet one day he woke happy and cheerful, and went forth to
play, but never came back again."
"You speak too truly," answered the beautiful girl with a sigh, "and
yet because harm came to him, it is no reason that it should come to
me, dear Aphiz."
"Still the fear that aught may happen to separate us is enough to
make me sad, Komel."
"Father says, that it is troubles which never happen that chiefly
make men miserable," answered the happy-spirited girl, as she laid
her head pleasantly upon Aphiz's arm.
They stood at her father's door in the closing hour of the day when
they spoke thus, and hardly had Aphiz's words died upon his lips
when the attention of both was directed towards the heavy, dark form
of a mountain-hawk, as it swept swiftly through the air, and poising
itself for an instant, marked where a gentle wood dove was perched
upon a projecting bough in the valley. Komel laid her hand with
nervous energy upon Aphiz's arm. The hawk was beyond the reach of
his rifle, and realizing this he dropped its breach once more to his
side. A moment more and the bolder bird was bearing its prey to its
mountain nest, there to feed upon it innocent body. Neither Komel
nor Aphiz uttered one word, but turned sadly away from the scene
that had seemed so applicable to the subject of their conversation.
He bade her a tender good night, but as the young mountaineer wended
his way down the valley he was sad at heart, and asked himself if
Komel might not be that dove.
So earnestly was he impressed with this idea, after the conversation
which had just occurred, that twice he turned his steps and resolved
to seek the lofty cliff where the hawk had flown, as though he could
yet release the poor dove; then remembering himself, he would once
more press the downward path to the valley.
It was not to be presumed that Komel should not have found other
admirers among the youths of her native valley. She had touched the
hearts of many, though being no coquette, they soon learned to
forget her, seeing how much her heart was already another's. This,
we say, was generally the case, but there was one exception, in the
person of a young man but little older than Aphiz, whose name was
Krometz. He had loved Komel truly, had told her so, and had been
gently refused her own affection by her; but still he persevered,
until the love he had borne her had turned to something very unlike
love, and he resolved in his heart that if she loved not him,
neither should she marry Aphiz.
At one time when Aphiz was in the heat of battle, charging upon the
Russian infantry, suddenly he staggered, reeled and fell, a bullet
had passed into his chest near the heart. His comrades raised him up
and brought him off the battle-field, and after days of painful
suffering he recovered, and was once more as well as ever, little
dreaming that the bullet which had so nearly cost him his life came
from one of his own countrymen. Could the ball have been examined,
it would have fitted exactly Krometz's rifle!
Though the rifle shot had failed, Krometz's enmity had in no way
abated; he only watched for an opportunity more successfully to
effect the object that now seemed to be the motive of his life.
Before Komel he was all gentleness, and affected the highest sense
of honor, but at heart he was all bitterness and revenge.
Another chapter will show the treacherous and deep game that the
rejected lover played.