CAUCASIA AND ITS PEOPLES 53 



sustained paganism, punctuated by dashes of diluted 

 Christianity. Their principal deities are Mountain 

 Spirits, dryads of the woods, the great Queen Thamara, 

 and St. George. Of their blood-feuds and wild inex- 

 plicable ways a student may glean much from Mr. 

 Freshfield's incomparable Exploration of the Caucasus. 



Jason's Field of Mars is now Mingrelian territory, 

 but the lazily-inclined tribesmen do not worry them- 

 selves to plough the famous furrows o'er again. The 

 Mingrelian is looked on in the Caucasus much in the 

 same light that an American regards his brother hailing 

 from Missouri State. Perhaps you know the " What 

 did you expect " tone of the explanatory, " Oh, he's 

 from Missouri ! " It is all there when a Russian 

 speaks of a Mingrelian. The Muscovite will tell you, 

 if you ask him, that he scorns the Mingrelian for his 

 indolent habits, forgetting that the warm mugginess 

 of the tropical swamp lands would sap the activity of 

 the most energetic. 



To the west of the land of the despised ones lies 

 Imeretia, another tropical comer, with a variation of 

 the most bitter winters. First cousins to the Georgians, 

 the Imeretians, speaking the same tongue. 



Some of the myriad dialects of the Caucasus have 

 affinity with each other, the basis being old Georgian, 

 but the majority are individual and distinct, having 

 been orally handed down through the centuries, bound 

 by no literary or written conventions. The Avarians 

 of Daghestan are said by chroniclers to possess a 

 written language, the original import of which is 

 specified in Persian characters. 



