Indeed, there exists among them certain persons really devoted to the Russians, but the greater number will betray even their own countrymen for a bribe.  In general, the morality of these peaceful allies of ours is completely corrupted; they have lost the courage of an independent people, and have acquired all the vices of half-civilization.  Among them an oath is a jest; treachery, their glory; even hospitality, a trade.  Each of them is ready to engage himself to the Russians in the morning, as a kounak (friend), and at night to guide a brigand to rob his new friend.

The left bank of the Terek is covered with flourishing stanitzas [21] of the Kazaks of the Line, the descendants of the famous Zaporojetzes.  Among them is here and there a Christian village.  These Kazaks are distinguished from the mountaineers only by their unshaven heads:  their tools, dress, harness, manners—­all are of the mountains.  They like the almost ceaseless war with the mountaineers; it is not a battle, but a trial of arms, in which each party desires to gain glory by his superiority in strength, valour, and address.  Two Kazaks would not fear to encounter four mountain horsemen, and with equal numbers they are invariably victors.  Lastly, they speak the Tartar language; they are connected with the mountaineers by friendship and alliance, their women being mutually carried off into captivity; but in the field they are inflexible enemies.  As it is not forbidden to make incursions on the mountain side of the Terek, the brigands frequently betake themselves thither by swimming the river, for the chase of various kinds of game.  The mountain brigands, in their turn, frequently swim over the Terek at night, or cross it on bourdouchs, (skins blown up,) hide themselves in the reeds, or under a projection of the bank, thence gliding through the thickets to the road, to carry off an unsuspecting traveller, or to seize a woman, as she is raking the hay.  It sometimes happens that they will pass a day or two in the vineyards by the village, awaiting a favourable opportunity to fall upon it unexpectedly; and hence the Kazak of the Line never stirs over his threshold without his dagger, nor goes into the field without his gun at his back:  he ploughs and sows completely armed.

[Footnote 21:  Villages of Kazaks.]

For some time past, the mountaineers had fallen in considerable numbers only on Christian villages, for in the stanitzas the resistance had cost them very dear.  For the plundering of houses; they approached boldly yet cunningly the Russian frontier, and on such occasions they frequently escaped a battle.  The bravest Ouzdens desire to meet with these affairs that they may acquire fame, which they value even more than plunder.