46 CASUALS IN THE CAUCASUS 



The great dramatist placed the chained Prometheus on 

 a rocky height above the sea, with the scream of the 

 gulls and the murmuring pity of the water-nymphs in 

 his ears, but later legend contributed a fabric, and 

 immortalized as the scene of the tragedy the black 

 eastern face of Kasbek, far from the sound of breaking 

 waves, save those of the foaming Terek River. 



It may be that these exquisite fancies and super- 

 stitions communicated themselves in dim remote 

 fashion to the infant intelligence of the varied tribes, 

 but certain it is that many of these primitive peoples 

 of the Caucasus are singularly imaginative. Not 

 theirs the dullness of the Russian peasant. Instead, a 

 quick alert fancy, stored with poetical illusions, weird 

 dreams, and necromantic visions. 



Superstition is the death of freedom, and yet it is 

 the free man, the dweller in the solitudes and silences 

 of the world, who is most superstitious. Living ever 

 in touch with the unknown infinite, each compassing 

 force of Nature, the winds and the rains, the deep un- 

 tried realms of the night, kindles an unfathomable 

 romanticism, lights a flame that is never dim. 



And now something about a few of the much- 

 written-of different peoples who make the region a 

 vast ethnological museum, in which may be found 

 specimens of races dating back to the dawn of history, 

 countless tribes whose variety has no end, whose 

 affinity hardly any beginning. 



Pliny, quoting Timosthenes, tells of three hundred 

 distinct languages which were spoken in ancient 

 Colchis, and adds that the Romans enlisted the services 



