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88 THE EXPLORATION OF THE CAUCASUS
by that which has found a place in atlases. Its snows were
hallowed — by legends obscure primitive fables of giants and hidden
treasures, mixed with monastic tales in which the treasures became
sacred objects — the tent of Abraham, the cradle of Christ. One
belief was universal, and sustained by the best evidence, that
the summit was inaccessible. The so-called '
'
ascents of German
travellers had been ascents '
to the lower limit of eternal snow.'
It was on the last day of June 1868 that our party left the
post-station of Kasbek, bent on this novel enterprise. We had
secured four inhaljitants of the village to carry our provisions and
a light tent. They were not Ossetes, but Chetchens, a mountain-
tribe whose homes lie mostly east of the Darial. They are
famous hunters ; they are said also to be pagans,
and to reverence
only the spirits of the mountains and the ghosts of their ancestors.
The endurance beyond the grave of personal existence and
the presence of mind behind the forms of matter appear to be
almost universal instincts of the human race, and when we look
closely, such sentiments may
seem to be the basis of most in-
digenous, or primitive, religions
in the Caucasus and elsewhere.
The beliefs and practices founded on these instincts have in the
Caucasus, however, been overlaid with a varnish of exti'aneous
morality or superstition, Christian and Mohammedan. Most
of the so-called '
conversions '
have been additions of new and
half - understood superstitions, welded but imperfectly into the
mental fabric of the tribes, and capable, as in the case of the
Suanetians and Abkhasians, of being almost completely thrown
off' again.
We camped for the night on a mossy plot in a hollow, at a
height of about 11,000 feet, under the moraine of the Ortsveri
Glacier, which sweeps round the southern flanks of Kasbek. Our
native porters went off' to some shelter, probably an overhanging
rock in the neighbourhood. We had left our interpreter, sick
with fever, at the post-station, and our means of communicating
with them were therefore natui-ally limited.
Next morning the jjorters were not forthcoming. The firing
of a revolver j^roduced no reph', and we started in the dark at