454 KETUEN TO TIFLIS. 



out Abkhasia, all but a corner of the Tcherkess country 

 (the true Oircassia), and Daghestan, the scene of Schamyl's 

 final resistance and capture, we encountered three entirely 

 distinct races, speaking widely different languages. These 

 were the Georgian tribes of the southern valleys, the 

 Tartars of the north, and the mysterious Ossetes, who 

 have long been a puzzle to ethnologists. The language of 

 the latter, according to Sir Henr}^ E-awlinson, is the most 

 nearly allied to Sanscrit spoken west of the Indus. The 

 other mountaineers use dialects of Tartar and Georgian so 

 diverse that the people of one valley often have difficulty 

 in understanding those of the next, although nominally 

 speaking the same language."^ 



The religions of the Caucasus are as various as its 

 languages. As a rule, whatever religion exists on the south 

 side of the chain is called Christian, and on the north 

 Mahommedan. The Ossetes, as usual, must be excepted ; 

 they were converted to Christianity in the days of Queen 

 Thamara, but afterwards relapsed into their former pagan- 

 ism, which is at the present day again overlaid by a slight 

 varnish of nominal Christianity. This re-conversion, if it 

 deserves the name, took place about the time of Herr 

 Wagner's visit to the country (1843-4), and he gives an 

 amusing account of the means employed by the Russian 

 missionaries to effect their end. ' The Russians ' (says this 

 writer) ' have made many efforts to win back the Ossetes 



* The Caucasus has in all ages been famed for its variety of languages. Pliny 

 tells us that in Xlolchis there were more than three hundred tribes speaking 

 different dialects, and that the Komans, in order to carry on any intercourse 

 with the natives, had to employ a hundred and thirty interpreters. This is 

 probably an exaggeration, but there seems no reason to doubt Strabo, who 

 informs us that in his day no less than seventy dialects were spoken in the 

 country, which even now is called 'the Mountain of Lang\uiges.' We find 

 archaic forms of various Georgian, Mongolian, Persian, Semitic, and Tatarian 

 languages, as well as anomalous forms of speech, which bear no affinity to any 

 known tongue of Europe or Asia.- — See Max Miiller's ' Lectures on Language ' 

 and Eev. J. Taylor's ' Words and Places.' 



