I was at that moment in Stavropol, a town about eighty miles to the north, and could not gain any satisfactory information as to what this colony was.

Some well-informed people assured me that it really was what its name implied, whilst others asserted as confidently that it was simply a small German settlement.

To decide the matter I determined to visit the place myself, though it did not lie near my intended route, and I accordingly found myself one morning in the village in question.

The first inhabitants whom I encountered were unmistakably German, and they professed to know nothing about the existence of Scotsmen in the locality either at the present or in former times.

This was disappointing, and I was about to turn away and drive off, when a young man, who proved to be the schoolmaster, came up, and on hearing what I desired, advised me to consult an old Circassian who lived at the end of the village and was well acquainted with local antiquities.