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•21+ THE EXPLORATION OF THE CAUCASUS
was imposed on them as rulers. Their obscure annals continue to
be full of fighting and slaughter. Early in the fifteenth century they
had to give up their claims to the villages on the upper Rion,
which still, in the case of Gebi and Chiora, bear traces of their
influence. In the eighteenth century the people on the Ingur
dispensed with the ruling family of the Ghelovani, who, as the
of the Skenis
Dadians, still exercise feudal rights in the valley
Skali on the southern side of the Latpari Pass. The Kabardan
family of the Dadish Kilians, coming from the north, had meantime
acquired large possessions, and some sort of control over the
four lower communities on the Ingur, while the hamlets round
the sources of the Rion had become absolutely independent.
They realised the new ideal of a society where the free-will of
the individual overrides all other considerations, and the only
check to crime is the reciprocal extinction of criminals.
From this time forth all certain knowledge of the valley was
lost. Its skin-clothed inhabitants paid occasional visits to the
lower country in search of salt, but what slight traffic there was
passed into the hands of the few Jewish families who had established
themselves at some unknown date in Lakhamula, the lowest
village above the great defile of the Ingur. Upper Suanetia was
left, '
the world forgetting, by the world forgot.' We are, however,
able to represent its condition from the reports of its first visitors
in the latter half of the present century.
The picture they bring before our eyes should not be without
interest to the advanced politicians, or dreamers, of Western Europe
and Russia itself. For here we find some of their wildest imagina-
tions carried out in practice.
I regret that I cannot give a more full statement as to the land
tenures and the transmission of property, as well as some account of
the old habits and beliefs of Suanetia. So far as I know, these
matters still await thorough treatment ; and no one should be
more capable of giving it than the Surveyors, who have spent as
many months among the mountain people as we travellers have
days. The Government would confer a lasting benefit on students
interested in the Caucasus by publishing reports from their officers