an. In the former the ruler could take the life of a subject with
impunity to gratify a mere caprice, while in the latter a subject who
considered himself aggrieved by a decision of the ruler could appeal to
the general assembly, which had power to annul the decree and even to
change the chief magistrate. Since the Russian conquest the mountaineers
have altered to some extent both their forms of government and their mode
of life. Blood-revenge and plundering raids into the valley of Georgia
have nearly ceased; tribal rulers in most parts of the mountains have
given place to Russian _ispravniks_; and the rude and archaic systems of
customary law which prevailed everywhere previous to 1860 are being slowly
supplanted by the less summary but juster processes of European
jurisprudence. Such, in rapid and general outline, are the past history
and the present condition of the Caucasian mountaineers.

Of course, the life, customs and social organization of a people who
originated in the peculiar way which I have described, and who have lived
for centuries in almost complete isolation from all the rest of the world,
must present many strange and archaic features. In the secluded valleys of
the Eastern Caucasus the modern traveller may study a state of society
which existed in England before the Norman Conquest, and see in full
operation customs and legal observances which have been obsolete
everywhere else in Europe for a thousand years. But it is to the
literature of these people rather than to their life or their customs that
I wish now particularly to call attention. I have said that they are
remarkable for originality and innate intellectual capacity, and I shall
endeavor to make good my assertion by presenting some specimens of their
songs, fables, riddles, proverbs, burlesques and popular tales. Living as
they do on the boundary-line between Europe and Asia, made up as they are
of many diverse races, Aryan, Turanian and Semitic, they inherit all the
traditionary lore of two continents, and hand down from generation to
generation the fanciful tales of the East mingled with the humorous
stories, the witty anecdotes and the practical proverbs of the West. You
may hear to-day 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-book of Hierocles, and
humorous exaggerations which you would feel certain must hav