During all this day's journey the road was covered with carriages, horsemen, and pedestrians, repairing to the fair of Stavropol, and affording samples of all the motley population of the vicinity, Circassians, Cossacks, Turcomans, Georgians, and Tatars; some in brilliant costume, caracoling on their high-bred Kalmuck or Persian horses, others stowed away with their families in carts covered with hides; others driving before them immense flocks of sheep or swine, that encompassed the carriages and horsemen, and occasioned some very comical incidents. Among all those whom business or pleasure was calling to the fair, we particularly noticed a very handsome young Circassian mounted on a richly caparisoned horse, and riding constantly beside a pavosk of more elegance than the rest, and the curtains of which were let down. This was enough to stimulate our curiosity, for in these romantic regions the slightest incident affords matter for endless conjectures. I would have given something to be allowed to lift one of the curtains of the mysterious pavosk, or at the least to keep it in view until our arrival in Stavropol, but our postilion did not partake in our curiosity, and putting his horses to a gallop, he soon made us lose sight of the group. The last low range of the Caucasus, which gradually diminishes in height to Stavropol, formed an irregular line on our left, in which we caught many hasty glimpses of charming scenery. The vegetation still retained a great degree of freshness, in consequence of the mildness of the temperature, which at this season would have appeared to us extraordinary even in more southern countries.
It was late in the evening when we reached Stavropol, so that we could not avail ourselves of our letters of introduction, and were obliged to hunt for a lodging in the hotels of the principal street. But they were all full, and with great difficulty we succeeded, with the help of our Polish friend, in getting admission to the Great Saint Nicholas, a shabby inn, the common room of which was already tenanted by a dozen travellers. Nevertheless, we secured a little corner, and there we contrived to form a tolerable sort of divan with our cushions and pelisses. I had now an opportunity of remarking how little notice travellers take of each other in this country. In this room, filled with people whose habits were so different from ours, we were as much at our ease as if the apartment belonged to us alone; and neither our language, behaviour, nor dress, appeared to attract any undue attention.
Stavropol, the capital of the whole Caucasus, is a very agreeable town, and appeared to us so much the more so from the animation lent it by the fair. But I perceive that in the course of these travels I have not named one town without immediately joining the word fair to it. It must be owned that chance was most bountiful to us in throwing in our way so many occasions for conceiving a high idea of the commerce of Russia. At Stavropol, however, the fair occupied our attention much less than General Grabe, who was just a week returned from an expedition against the Circassians. His staff filled the whole town with the noise of their martial deeds. Every officer had his story of some glorious exploit, whereof of course he was himself the hero. Though so recently returned, General Grabe was already in busy preparation for another campaign, on which he built the greatest hopes. The good gentleman even pressed my husband very strongly to accompany him, as if it were a mere party of pleasure. He offered him his tent, instruments, and every thing necessary to render the excursion beneficial to science. Under any other circumstances my husband would no doubt have yielded to the temptation of visiting the tribes of the Caucasus in the very heart of their mountains, under the protection of a whole army, but it would have been madness to undertake such a journey after those we had but just completed.
Before we finally take leave of the Caucasian regions, it will not be amiss to give some historical account of that part of the empire, and of the Cossacks of the Black Sea, to whom is committed the perilous task of protecting the frontiers against the incessant attacks of the formidable mountain tribes.
It was by virtue of an ukase promulgated by Catherine II. in 1783, that Russia took full and entire possession of all the countries north of the Kouban and the Terek, which of yore formed the almost exclusive dominions of numerous hordes of black Nogais, some of them independent, others acknowledging the authority of the Tatar khans of the Crimea. But previously to this period the tzars were already in military occupation of the country, for it was in 1771 that they completed the armed line of the Caucasus, begun by Peter the Great, at the mouth of the Terek.