52 CASUALS IN THE CAUCASUS 



maintain his long religious war against the Russians. 

 Schamyl himself, though always referred to as a 

 Lesghian, as the inhabitants of Southern Daghestan 

 are collectively denominated, was an Avar, a branch 

 tribe, from whose ranks the greatest men of Dagh- 

 estan have sprung. All these mountain men are 

 devout Mahommedans, and make pilgrimages to Mecca. 

 Big, powerful creatures, of a pronounced Mongol type, 

 they are most industrious workers at their many manu- 

 factures. The blades forged in Daghestan are re- 

 nowned through the whole country, carpet-making, 

 armoury of all kinds, silver work, and making the cloth 

 for the universally worn bourkas employ large num- 

 bers of the keen-witted tribesmen of this wild highland 

 comer of the Caucasus. 



Near Pjatigorsk, the health resort of all health 

 resorts, is Karbarda, the home of a fine manly tribe 

 alUed to the Adighe. Many Karbardan aristocrats are 

 to be found in the military service of Russia, whose 

 friend Karbarda has ever been. 



In a wonderland, amidst the wooded valleys of the 

 Upper Ingur, live the Suanetians, the Soans of Strabo's 

 day, probably, unless we include the Ingouch, the only 

 tribe existing in the same conditions of primitive en- 

 vironment which surrounded them a thousand years 

 agone. " The age is always the same," Goethe said ; 

 " the oiily difference being the master minds that 

 control it." The trend of civilization has passed 

 Suanetia by, and the master-minds of her controlling 

 chieftains are no more advanced than the master- 

 minds of long ago. The religion practised is a sort of 



