-enemy claim refuge, do not send him away: receive him.

3. If he wishes to go away, let no one travel with him.

4. If one be killed while travelling with a blood-enemy, his blood shall
count for nothing.

5. Him through whose betrayal a blood-enemy is killed, count as himself
a blood-enemy, with all his family.

_He who holds his tongue will save his head._

1. The bek shall summon the general assembly every year: if he does not,
remove him.

2. From him who does not come at the bek's call take a hundred yards of
linen.

3. From a country without a ruler, from a community without a general
assembly, from a flock without a shepherd, from an army without a leader
and from a village without aldermen, no good will come. Let him who has
sense think of this.

4. Have a care, bek! Speak the truth. Truth exalts a man and makes his
power endure for ever. The earth does not consume, but glorifies, the
body of him whom God has blessed.

5. Have a care, people of Kaitaga! Receive the truth. It is by justice
and truth that a community becomes great.

The above are only a few extracts from a long and detailed code of
criminal law written in Arabic and preserved in the mosque of an East
Caucasian village. The separate rules are known as _adats_, or
precedents, and the system of jurisprudence founded upon them is called
"trial by adat," to distinguish it from the course of procedure laid
down in the Koran and known as "trial by _shariat_." It is hardly
necessary to say that in such a state of society as that reflected in
this barbarous and archaic code of laws there must exist the elements of
the profoundest tragedy and almost infinite possibilities of suffering.
Out of grief, tragedy and suffering grows the literature of heroism,
bearing fruit in such fierce triumphant songs as the one which follows.
It is supposed to be sung by the spirit of a mountaineer who has been
killed in battle:

THE DEATH-SONG OF THE CHECHENSE.

The earth is drying on my grave, and thou art forgetting me,
O my own mother!
The weeds are overgrowing my burial-place, and they deaden even
thy sorrow, O my aged father!
The tears fall no more from the eyes of my sister, and from her
heart the misery is passing away;
But do not thou forget me, O my elder brother! until thou shalt
have avenged my death;
And do not thou forget me, O my younger