and when unhappily the small-pox has quite left the country, the
inhabitants of it are in as great trouble and perplexity as other nations
when their harvest has fallen short.

The circumstance that introduced a custom in Circassia, which appears so
singular to others, is nevertheless a cause common to all nations, I mean
maternal tenderness and interest.

The Circassians are poor, and their daughters are beautiful, and indeed,
it is in them they chiefly trade. They furnish with beauties the
seraglios of the Turkish Sultan, of the Persian Sophy, and of all those
who are wealthy enough to purchase and maintain such precious
merchandise. These maidens are very honourably and virtuously instructed
to fondle and caress men; are taught dances of a very polite and
effeminate kind; and how to heighten by the most voluptuous artifices the
pleasures of their disdainful masters for whom they are designed. These
unhappy creatures repeat their lesson to their mothers, in the same
manner as little girls among us repeat their catechism without
understanding one word they say.

Now it often happened that, after a father and mother had taken the
utmost care of the education of their children, they were frustrated of
all their hopes in an instant. The small-pox getting into the family,
one daughter died of it, another lost an eye, a third had a great nose at
her recovery, and the unhappy parents were completely ruined. Even,
frequently, when the small-pox became epidemical, trade was suspended for
several years, which thinned very considerably the seraglios of Persia
and Turkey.

A trading nation is always watchful over its own interests, and grasps at