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60 THE EXPLORATION OF THE CAUCASUS
Tlie ethnologist as well as the geographer must be called on to
dismiss some time-honoured fictions with regard to the Caucasus.
Tlie mountain-fastnesses have not, as was until recently believed,
furnished a cradle to a great branch of humanity. In this sense
the Caucasian of Cuvier is
really
'
played
'
out ! Even a poet
might now hesitate to write of the 'supreme Caucasian mind.'
The highlands between the Black Sea and the Caspian have
served as a refuge for portions of many races. They
form an
ethnological museum where the invaders of Europe, as they
travelled westwards to be manufactured into nations, have left
behind samples of themselves in their raw condition. Russian
ethnologists have been, and are, hard at Avork. But they have
still much to learn before they can render us any complete
accoimt of the origin and affinities of these living fragments,
which, like the erratic boulders on the hills, serve as records of
facts that might otherwise have passed into oblivion.
My travels in the Central Caucasus have led me mostly among
three distinct races: first the Ossetes, members of the Iranian branch
of the Aryan family, who dwell on both sides of the chain south and
west of Vladikavkaz ; next the Tauli or Mountain Turks, whose
territoiy includes the highlands between Koshtantau and Elbruz ;
last, the curious people known as Suanetians, a collection of
refugees, grafted possibly on a Georgian, or, as some prefer to say,
on a Kolkhian stock.' Besides these, we may meet with Cherkess,
or Circassians, on the Baksan, with Mingrelians in the valley of
the Hion, with Karatshai Tartars near the source of the Kuban.
Ossetian is a distinct language ; Mingrelian
and Suan are dialects
of Georgian ; the Mohammedan tribes speak an old Turkish dialect.
Among the bleak uplands of Daghestan, isolated by deep gorges
and arid ridges, there exists to this day a medley of races, some
of which bear historic names—Huns and Avars. The western
wing of the Caucasus has been occupied
from time immemorial
^ I do not find that ethnological writers use this term in any very fixed sense. The most
intelligible use is that which restricts it to the Abkhasians, who dwell west of the Ucorgians.
See Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society, vol. xvii., and fjitlord Palgrave's descrii)tion of the
Abkhasians, Eastern iitxidies, 1872.