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found to be the only Cossacks sufficiently skilled to cope with Schamyl's wild mountain horsemen on equal terms. The Don Cossacks were lancers, and the Circassians quickly learned to dodge within their guard and cut them down, they being among the most expert swordsmen in the world.

But the descendants of Mazeppa's Cossacks were equally expert with the sword, and so, in the matter of arms, as of horsemanship, met the enemy on equal terms. For many years the Cossacks of the Caucasian line were engaged in perpetual border warfare with the Circassian tribes. Their fighting was a series of little cavalry combats, surprises and raids, similar to the American Indian frontier wars, the finest school for the development of military horsemanship the world has seen since the days of Saladin and Coeur-de-Lion. Graduates from this fierce, wild school of saddle and saber, the Cossacks of the Caucasian line have long enjoyed the reputation of being the flower of that vast horde of irregular cavalry, the Cossack military colonies, that have been planted along the southern frontier of the Russian Empire, from the Crimea to the Chinese border on the Pacific.

Circassian blood plainly crops out in the Cossacks of the Buffalo Bill Wild West arena. Indeed, some of them look the Circassian, even more than the Cossack. The infusion of Circassian, Georgian and Mingrelian blood, began with stirring drama of strife and romance in the days of Schamyl. Part of the policy of Russia was the suppression of the trade-in Circassian beauties for the harems of Turkey, then carried on in small Turkish vessels in the Black Sea. coastguard service was organized for the purpose, consisting of fleets of rowboats concealed in the creeks and inlets of the Caucasian coast, whence they could pounce out on the slave ships. A Cossack coastguard service was organized for the purpose, consisting of fleets of rowboats concealed in the creeks and inlets of the Caucasian coast, whence they could pounce out on the slave ships.

The vessels usually contained from forty to fifty Circassian, Georgian and Mingrelian slave girls, lovely creatures selected for the harems of the Sultan and the wealthy Pashas of Constantinople. The slaves thus captured were given to the Cossacks of the Kuban for wives; hence the sons and daughters of Schamyl's fierce opponents are as much Circassian as Cossack. The combination is a "strain" of horsemanship that has produced startling and unique results in the form of riders capable of really marvelous feats of a kind never before seen outside of Russia. Visitors to the Wild West who have marveled at the skill of the Indians and the Cow-boys with the bucking mustangs, will marvel anew at the striking performances of these descendants of the famous Mazeppa."

SOUTH AMERICAN GAUCHOS AT THE "WILD WEST."

The latest additions to BUFFALO BILL'S "Wild West" makes the sixth delegation to the "Congress of the Rough Riders of the World," which MESSRS. CODY and SALSBURY have organized in order to present the different schools of horsemanship to the world.

Having seen the performances of the Cow-boy, the Indian, the Vaquero, and lastly, of the Cossacks of the Caucasian line, our appetites are considerably whetted at the prospect of seeing how wildlife on the South American pampas contrast with theirs.

To the student of human progress, of racial peculiarities, of national characteristics, the Gauchos are a subject of investigation as remarkable as anything modern history has to show.