call themselves Ir, or Iron, and number about 30,000.1 They have been well disposed to the Russians almost from the first, though indulging in occasional robberies, and their position, close to the great line of communication, made their friendship valuable. On the northern slopes of the mountains, between Vladikavkaz and Pjätigorsk, lies the territory of Kabarda, inhabited by Mohammedans speaking a tongue which is generally held to be a branch of the Tcherkess or Circassian, a manly and vigorous race, who have mostly been on good terms with Russia, and some of whose nobles have risen to high places in her army. Still farther west, between the watershed and the Kuban, stretching far to the north-west of Elbruz lay Circassia, inhabited by tribes who called themselves Adighé, and whom the Russians knew as Tcherkesses. They were nearly all Mohammedans, though of rather a loose kind, admirable horsemen and marksmen, living by war and pillage, and leaving to their women such tillage as the character of the country permitted. South of them, in the upper valley of the Ingur, and amid the grandest scenery of the whole Caucasus, dwell the Suans or Svanny, the Soanes of Strabo; and still farther west, on the wooded mountains that border the Euxine all along by Sukhum Kaleh, are the Abhasians, a people supposed to be

Other estimates raise the number of the Ossets to 60,000. The numbers given here are taken from a Russian statistical publication of some reputation, but I dare say they are only rough estimates.

The Kabardans are sometimes, but apparently on insufficient grounds, classed as Circassians. Distinct from both seems to be the small tribe of Tatars who inhabit the upper valley of the Baksan, at the foot of Elbruz.

allied to the Tcherkesses, and sometimes included with them under the Circassian name, but speaking a distinct language. They were converted to Christianity by Justinian, but have since relapsed, some into a loose sort of Mohammedanism, some into paganism. They are the most unmitigated rogues and thieves in the whole Caucasus, whose only occupation, since they were first heard of, has been kidnapping children to sell for slaves, formerly into the Roman and, since its fall, into the Turkish empire. In their country the Turks have lately, in May 1877, effected a landing, and are reported to have been joined by 10,000 mountaineers. As the whole Abhasian population probably does not exceed 70,000, this story must be received with more than distrust. They are, no doubt, disaffected to Russia now, as they were to Turkey formerly, and would be to anybody who should try to check their misdeeds. But they are too wild and unstable to be of the least use in a campaign.

The Muslim peoples of the Caucasus are held by most travellers to be superior in energy and uprightness to the Christians. I saw too little to judge whether this is so, but enough to be sure that the Christianity of the mountain tribes is the merest name. Some, like the Hessurs and the cognate tribes of Pshaws and Tushins, are really polytheists, and worship, besides what they call the Christ-God, a god of war, and gods or "angels" of the earth, the oak, the mountain, and so forth. In fact, their Christianity consists in kissing the cross, in feasting and idling on certain holidays, fasting on others, and in worshipping

deities, some of whom go by the names of Christian saints. Such ceremonies as they have bear traces of Georgian origin; so it is likely enough that the Georgian princes, whose suzerainty they used to acknowledge, were the instruments of their conversion. The Suans worship the Georgian queen Tamara to this day, along with St. George: and the priestthey seem to have a hereditary and illiterate priesthood-repeats fragments of prayers and psalms, and receives a gift for his pains. Bitter blood feuds rage among them, for they are a fierce and passionate race, and seldom rich enough to pay the heavy compensation in cattle which ancient custom entitles the relatives of a slain man to require; hence murders go on from generation to generation exactly as in Corsica till lately, or in Iceland in the days of the old republic.

To write the history of Russian conquest in the Caucasus would lead me too far afield, and would require various geographical elucidations which I have no space for. One remark, however, is worth making, to remove a misconception which was current in England at the time of the Crimean War, when some enterprising spirits proposed that we should use the mountaineers as allies against the Czar Nicholas. There never was any general war in the Caucasus, nor any concerted action among the tribes who defended their independence. We used to talk of the Circassians as a people inhabiting the whole chain, and carrying on war against the Russians, whereas in reality they were only one among many races, the majority of whom were neutral or favourable to

Russia. Although outbursts and disturbances occasionally happened in other places, the struggle was in the main confined to two districts: Daghestan, in the east, where Shamyl, at the head of the Lesghians, and one or two minor cognate tribes, maintained a religious war; and Circassia proper, the country of the Adighé or Tcherkesses, who occupied what I have called the western and lowest section of the chain, and the hilly country lying to the north of it and drained by the Kuban. The intermediate tribes, Tatars of the Baksan valley, and Kabardans, both of whom are Mohammedans, as well as the semi-Christian Ossets, Ingushes, and Suans, were generally quiet, and prevented that co-operation against the Russians which Shamyl more than once tried to bring about. The Tchetchens, who number about 115,000, had given the Czar some trouble, but were mostly reduced to a sullen submission before 1854, being inferior in martial qualities to both Lesghians and Kabardans. Shamyl himself was a great man, crafty and cruel, no doubt, but with a daring, a tenacity, and a fertility of resource that remind one of Abd-el-Kader, and able to raise to a marvellous height the fanaticism of his followers. He was wonderfully eloquent, and added to his reputation for sanctity that of bearing a charmed life, for he had, like Abd-el-Kader, repeatedly escaped when he was believed to have been

1 A prophet is not an uncommon phenomenon among these peoples. There have been some of late years in Persia; and a quite remarkable one appeared among the Tcherkesses at the end of last century, by name Bey Mansur, who roused his countrymen against the Russians and was captured by them at Anapa in 1790.

killed, and reappeared unhurt in some distant spot. Though he never commanded more than a few thousand warriors, and in his later days only a few hundreds, the physical character of Daghestan, a country of plateaux intersected by profound and narrow gorges, made all the efforts of the Russians fruitless, until they abandoned the plan of regular expeditions against him, and set themselves to hem him in by construct ing military roads, and erecting forts which commanded the gorges, and drew a narrowing cordon around him. When his last stronghold, the rock fortress of Gunib, was stormed by the army of Prince Bariatinski, in August 1859, he came down and surrendered like Vercingetorix to Caesar, happily to meet a milder fate, for, after an honourable exile of a few years near Moscow, he was allowed to proceed to Mecca, and died there not long ago.

A little later, in 1864, the Tcherkesses of the west finally submitted. The Russian government, who knew by experience that their marauding propensities were incurable, adopted a plan which was no doubt stern, but may have been necessary. They offered them their choice of quitting the mountains, where they were uncontrollable, and settling in the low country along the Kuban, or else of emigrating into Turkish territory. Numerous envoys from Turkey came among them, and urged the latter course, which was accordingly chosen by the bulk of the nation. Four hundred thousand are said to have come down to the ports whither the Sultan had promised to send vessels to receive them. The vessels, however, like