AN ISLAND IN THE SEA OF HISTORY 



1111 



THE BOUNDLESS HOSPITALITY OE THE 

 MOUNTAINEERS 



At all the large aouls in northern Da- 

 ghestan, where Prmce Djordjadzi was 

 well known, we were received with 

 boundless hospitality. Cattle and sheep 

 innumerable were slaughtered for bar- 

 becues and pilaus. Everything in the 

 shape of food that the country afforded 

 was set before us ; and night after night 

 we reclined on a soft rug at the door of 

 some mountaineer's house, with a bon- 

 fire blazing in the courtyard, and lis- 

 tened to the songs of the Lesghians, or 

 watched the brilliantly dressed men and 

 women whirling in their strange national 

 dance to the barbaric music of fifes, bag- 

 pipes, kettle - drums, and tambourines. 

 The inhabitants of northern Daghestan, 

 living in comparatively wide and open 

 valleys and within easy reach of a mar- 

 ket, are much more wealthy and civil- 

 ized than those whose homes are far 

 back in the deep valleys or on the pre- 

 cipitous terraces of the high mountains, 

 and their social customs have been more 

 or less modified by intercourse with the 

 Russians. 



We soon left behind us, however, these 

 hospitable villages and plunged into the 

 wonderful labyrinth of dark ravines in 

 central Daghestan (see pages 1088 and 

 1089). I'he most vivid and faithful de- 

 scription could hardly do justice to the 

 savage wildness of the scenery that was 

 presented to us as we rode southward 

 toward the headwaters of the rushing 

 torrent known as the Avarski Koisu. 



Upheavals, fractures, volcanic activity, 

 and torrential floods had apparently 

 tilted, faulted, disrupted, broken, and 

 eroded the geological strata of Daghes- 

 tan until not a single square mile of level 

 and undisturbed ground was left. Even 

 from the highest ridges and watersheds 

 that we crossed nothing could be seen 

 but a chaos of treeless mountains, high, 

 isolated mesas, gigantic precipices, and 

 deep, gloomy ravines, through which 

 boiled and roared the rock-tormented 

 waters of a hundred snow-born streams. 



So far as I could judge without accurate 

 geological knowledge, Daghestan con- 

 sisted originally of an extensive plateau 



of sedimentary limestones ana shales, 

 which was tilted up by the elevation of 

 the main range until its southern edge lay 

 on the granitic rock of the mountain 

 backbone at a height of perhaps 8,000 

 feet. From that point it sloped north- 

 ward and downward until it reached the 

 level of the sea at the boundary of the 

 south Russian steppes. 



HOW NATURE CHANGED A PLAIN INTO A 

 WALL 



At the time of its formation, or per- 

 haps earlier or later, this sloping plateau 

 was more or less broken and dislocated 

 by upheavals of igneous rock, and was 

 then cut, channeled, and furrowed into 

 deep, narrow ravines and canyons by 

 scores of mountain torrents, which rose 

 in the high trough between the main 

 range and the so-called snowy range and 

 ran down the 8,000- foot slope to the level 

 of the Caspian. 



I do not know that this is a scientific- 

 ally accurate explanation of the present 

 contour of Daghestan ; probably it is not ; 

 but at least it accounts in a conjectural 

 way for many of the striking topograph- 

 ical features of the country. Scores of 

 the peaks and ridges that have pierced 

 or fractured the limestones and shales 

 between the steppes and the main range 

 are unquestionably granitic. 



The great sulphur mine of Khiyut (see 

 page mo) affords evidence of volcanic 

 action ; and the deep, narrow gorges of 

 the Koisus and their tributaries show the 

 effects of running water as clearly as do 

 the canyons of Arizona. If a line could 

 now be drawn from the main range to the 

 Russian steppes across the tops of the 

 isolated mesas that stand here and there 

 in the labyrinth of deep gorges, it would 

 represent, roughly, the slope of that an- 

 cient uptilted plateau before it had been 

 cut into a maze of gloomy galleries by 

 the eroding action of running water, 



UNRIVALED MOUNTAIN SCENERY 



The road — or rather the bridle path — 

 that we followed after leaving Joongootai 

 wound through dark canyons with almost 

 precipitous sides, now descending to the 

 edge of a roaring torrent, then climbing 

 in a series of shelf-like zigzags to a 



