The Caucasian Mountains and their Inhabitants. 109 



Throughout the Caucasus the various tribes take ad- 

 vantage of these ever-present slopes, dig into them, and 

 make there their warm but sombre and smoky abodes. 

 One village that I visited near Vladi-Caucasse, on the 

 northern side of this giant range, stood on level ground, 

 was built mainly of wood, of sticks and stones, dried clay 

 and straw, one-story buildings, low at that, and thatched. 



The best families construct a number of edifices in such 

 a situation as to form a hollow square ; all the doors, and 

 windows if there be any, open on this engirded area, 

 which affords at night quite a secure place for the flocks and 

 herds of the proprietor. The only access from the street 

 is by a gate-way, always kept closed. Near this entrance 

 is the master's house, hall or apartment, while the dwell- 

 ing for the women is on the other side of the yard. In a 

 visit to one of these enclosures — not particularly neat or 

 attractive — I saw at an open window opposite, two heads 

 as pleasing, and as pleasingly decorated, as you would 

 expect to see represented in the finest of oriental paintings. 



It reminded me of our lilies — for the Circassian 

 women have fair complexions — of our delicate pond 

 lilies afloat on the turbid waters of a filthy stream. They 

 must indeed be the oasis in that strange, thought-sterile, 

 desert-life ; the light, the poetry, the music, in that wild, 

 weird wilderness of ideas and ideality. 



Another house which I entered in Vladi-Caucasse, had 

 a very low thatched roof and two rooms. The room 

 nearest the street was extremely dark and full of smoke. 

 When I could see, I discovered that a considerable portion 

 of the apartment was occupied by a huge oven of clay, at 

 which an old, poorly-clad woman was baking bread. 



The sister of the young man who was my guide there, 

 favored us a moment with her presence ; but in accord- 

 ance with their education, instinctively it would seem, 



