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222 THE EXPLORATION OF THE CAUCASUS
a hasty glance shows that the first four tongues have many
words in common, while the Abkhasian seems to stand absolutely
apart from all of them.' The problem that has been discussed
is : Are the Suanetians— so far as they are not merely a mixture
of refugees who have found shelter at diflPerent times in this
mountain Alsatia— of the Georgian stock, or do they belong to
some primitive Kolkhian race ? The first view is taken by Eadde
and Kovalevsky, the second by De Bernoville, w^hom M. Chant re
copies
in the short notice contained in his
encj'cloptedic and
splendidly illustrated work. The linguistic argument seems to me
in favour of the former view.
In this strange and interesting political and social condition,
Suanetia appears to have remained for more than a century. Off
the world's highways and out of the world's contests, the mountain
communities went on turning, like the earthen pot, round and
round in their own rock-girt pool, until they were swept at
last into the stream of the nations. Meantime the Free Suane-
tians were free and independent to their hearts' content. They
were as lawless as the Cyclopes of the Odysseij. They knew no
restraint to their passions. No man could call either his wife or
his house his own except in so far as he could defend them
by force. The right of murder was the foundation of society.
Such a state of things was too ideal to last in this
prosaic,
order-loving age. In 1833 Russia assumed suzerainty over the
district, and as years went on her suzerainty became more than
nominal.
Shortly after the Crimean War a Russian force penetrated,
1 M. Chantre prints a very poetical legend purporting to account for the absence of anv
written form of tlie Circassian dialect. A learned Adighe or Circassian, an Arabic scholar, sat
down to endeavour to make an alphabetical representation of his native tongue. He had not
proceeded far when his labours were interrupted by the sudden appearance
of a venerable
figure. The stranger addressed him to this etlect : 'Give up your hopeless task. Can you
put into human writing the rolling of the thunder among the peaks, the crash of the falling
avalanche, the deep roar of the mountain-torrents, the blast of the waterfalls ? Can you
represent the sounds of the stones as they clatter down the gorges, of the branches of the forest
as they moan in the tempest, the screams and songs of the birds as they call to one another
from height to height ? How then can you hope to imprison in letters the free speech of
the tribes of Cireassia ? '