Free Let Our Fame Be Great by Oliver Bullough

goods overboard, but some sacrifice was needed. After a brief dispute that seems to have occupied the whole crew, they disposed of the gun carriage (the gun itself was in the hold) and the Circassian flag, which clearly was yet to earn the reverence that it currently enjoys.
    Although the Russians opened fire, the little boat managed to reach shore and the passengers were safe. This encounter with Russian warships became typical for anyone trying to reach the coast – Longworth had an almost identical one – and became such a cliché that comics even began to mock it. It is hard in fact to avoid the impression that the dread Russian navy was rather inept since it so frequently failed to capture visitors approaching the coastline. In
Bell’s case, the Russian warships repeatedly failed to cut off their prey, sailing directly towards his ship rather than to stop it reaching the shore, thus having to change course and sail repeatedly. Their shooting also must have been slack, since they fired many times without success.
    The boat used by Longworth, who arrived separately, meanwhile outpaced its chasing warship in a straight race, which suggests the latter was a sluggish vessel, and the Circassians amused themselves by taunting their failed pursuers as they fell astern.
    â€˜What are you afraid of now? Why don’t you make haste, Kaffer [unbeliever]? Don’t you see we are ready for you? Only come alongside, and we will give you a reception that will teach you how to terrify true believers in future,’ taunted a rather ridiculous fellow passenger who had been to Mecca and whom Longworth refers to as the ‘Hadji’ as a result.
    The reception received by the two travellers on arrival in Circassia was warm, and allowed them both to study Circassian culture to a degree never again rivalled by foreign visitors. The culture was marked by an extraordinary degree of hospitality. Every house was graced with a guest house, set aside from the main quarters of the family and kept in a permanent state of readiness. No warning was required before arrival, and a sheep was regularly killed for the English guests to eat.
    Their hosts seem to have been permanently delighted by the chance of showing off their largesse, and one old man with whom Longworth was billeted at one point positively revelled in it. ‘We were welcomed and waited on by the patriarch of this little hamlet, in person, to whom the duties of hospitality seemed to give new life and spirit. Indeed, it was a most pleasing sight to see him bustling beneath his burden of fourscore in the discharge of them.’
    The importance of hospitality to the culture is almost impossible to overstate, and was a crucial element in the life of the nation. Without a government, organized religion or a money-based economy, the two travellers had none of the facilities for finding accommodation that they would have been used to. It was not possible to rent a room, there being no money to do so, nor to find a government guest
house as was the practice on the Russian side of the lines. As such, they stopped wherever they found themselves. Anything they expressed an interest in was given to them, since the culture of hospitality included great generosity.
    Hospitality was indeed taken to the extreme of the guest being sacred in every respect, and Longworth relates the story of a Circassian family that unwittingly welcomed a Russian engineer to its house. The Russian had Circassian guides, and was disguised as a Circassian, and his hosts were duty-bound to receive him with all warmth. The presence of the engineer, a man called Tornau, who later wrote memoirs of his own, was known to the Circassians hunting him. He and his guides, however, were safe within the walls of his refuge. ‘They had partaken of bread and salt under the roof of a Circassian, and he and his tribe had become responsible for it with their lives: whatever their horror of a spy and a Russian,