AX ISLAND IX THE SEA OF HISTORY 



1129 



moved cousins in Germany, England, 

 and Scotland. There is no form of 

 American wit or humor that would not 

 l3e instantly understood and keenly ap- 

 preciated in scores of Caucasian aouls, 

 and many anecdotes that are current in 

 the United States have been independ- 

 ently thought out and put into effective 

 literary shape by the mountaineers of 

 Daghestan. 



W'HKRK AMERICAN HUMOR IS AT HOM^ IN 

 RUSSIA 



American jokes, bragging stories, and 

 liumorous exaggerations can be put into 

 the brains of these quick-witted high- 

 landers without a surgical operation, and 

 many of their skits and yarns are pre- 

 cisely like ours, both in spirit and in 

 form. I heard one night, in a lonely 

 Caucasian aoul, a humorous story that 

 had been told me less than a year before 

 l)y a student of the Western Reserve 

 College at Hudson, Ohio, and that was 

 doubtless invented, independently, by 

 l)rains 6,000 miles apart. 



But the Caucasian mountaineers have 

 more kinds of jokes, stories, and anec- 

 dotes than we have. Living as they do 

 on the boundary line between Europe 

 and Asia, made up as they are of many 

 diverse races — Aryan, INIongolian, and 

 Semitic — they inherit all the traditionary 

 lore of two continents, and hand down 

 from generation to generation the fanci- 

 ful tales of the East, mingled with the 

 liumorous stories, the witty anecdotes, 

 and the practical proverbs of the West. 



You may hear today in almost any 

 Caucasian aoul didactic fables from the 

 Sanscrit of the Hitopadesa, anecdotes 

 from the Gulistan of the Persian poet 

 Saadi, old jokes from the Grecian jest- 

 l)ook of Hierocles, and humorous exag- 

 gerations which you would feel certain 

 must have originated west of the Missis- 

 sippi River. 



The poems of the Daghestan highland- 

 ers, and especially their war songs and 

 laments, show that while thev are tem- 

 peramentally fighters, and often blood- 

 avengers or brigands, thev have strong 

 liuman feelings and many fine mental and 

 emotional traits. Their indomitable for- 

 titude is expressed in the noble proverb, 



"Heroism is endurance — for one moment 

 more," and their hospitality in the pro- 

 verbial saying, ''A guest — a man from 

 God." 



PATHOS AND POKTRY 01^ THl^ MOUNTAIN 

 I^OI.K SONGS 



They are passionately fond of music, 

 skillful in metrical improvisation, and 

 gifted with delicate poetic sensibility. 

 What could be more imaginative in con- 

 ception and felicitous in expression, for 

 example, than this colloquy between 

 mother and daughter, which is trans- 

 lated without embellishment from a well- 

 known Daghestan song. 



The daughter says : 



"Come out of doors, O mother ! and see what 

 a wonder is here ! 



Up through the snows of the mountain the 

 flowers of spring appear ! 



Come out on the roof, O mother! and see how 

 along the ravine 



The glacier ice is covered with the spring- 

 time's leafy green !" 



The mother replies : 



"There are no flowers, my daughter, 'tis only 



because thou art young 

 That blossoms from under the mountain snows 



appear to thee to have sprung. 

 There is no grass on the glacier — the blades 



do not even start; 

 But thou art in love, and the grass and flowers 



are springing in thy heart." 



W^as better expression ever given to 

 the thought that all the world seems 

 fresh and beautiful to one who is young 

 and in love? 



Day after day Prince Djordjadzi and 

 I rode from aoul to aoul through the 

 wild mountain scenery of the eastern 

 Caucasus, sometimes climbing through 

 low-hanging clouds to solitary shepherds' 

 huts on the high mesas, 4,000 feet above 

 the sea ; sometimes descending into nar- 

 row, gloomy gorges which suggested the 

 canyons of Arizona, and sleeping every 

 night in the flat-roofed stone houses of 

 the fierce, wild but hospitable mountain- 

 eers. The state of society in which we 

 found ourselves was as rude and savage 

 in some respects as that which Csesar 

 found among the barbarians of ancient 

 Gaul, and almost every day we had an 

 opportunity to observe customs and 



