ll remain a few isolated _aouls_ ("villages") of
idolaters; in Daghestan there are four or five thousand Jews, who,
although they have lost their language and their national character, still
cling to their religion; and among the high peaks of Toochetia is settled
a tribe of Christians said to be the descendants of a band of mediaeval
crusaders. But these are exceptions: ninety-nine one-hundredths of the
mountaineers are Mohammedans of the fiercest, most intolerant type.

The languages and dialects spoken by the different tribes of this
heterogeneous population are more than thirty in number, two-thirds of
them being in the eastern end of the range, where the ethnological
diversity of the people is most marked. So circumscribed and clearly
defined are the limits of many of these languages that in some parts of
the Eastern Caucasus it is possible to ride through three or four
widely-different linguistic areas in a single day. Languages spoken by
only twelve or fifteen settlements are comparatively common; and in
South-western Daghestan there is an isolated village of less than fifty
houses--the aoul of Innookh--which has a dialect of its own not spoken or
understood, so far as has yet been ascertained, by any other portion of
the whole Caucasian population. None of these mountain-languages have ever
been written, but the early introduction of the Arabic supplied to a great
extent this deficiency. Almost every settlement has its _mullah_ or
_kadi_, whose religious or judicial duties make it necessary for him to
know how to read and write the language of the Koran, and when called upon
to do so he acts for his fellow-townsmen in the capacity of amanuensis or
scribe. Since 1860 the eminent Russian philologist General Usler has
invented alphabets and compiled grammars for six of the principal
Caucasian languages, and the latter are now taught in all the government
schools established under the auspices of the Russian mountain
administration at Vladi Kavkaz, Timour Khan, Shoura and Groznoi.

In government the Caucasian highlanders acknowledged previous to the
Russian conquest no general head, each separate tribe or community having
developed for itself such system of polity as was most in accordance with
the needs and temperament of its component members. These systems were of
almost all conceivable kinds, from the absolute hereditary monarchies of
the Arab khans to the free communities or simple republics of Southern
Daghest