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CAUCASTAX HISTOKV AND TRAVEL 61
by the Adighe, or Cherkess, and the Abkliasiaus— the Circassians
of modern history and romance, primitive peoples of uncertain origin,
and with no written lancruages.
In ireneral history the Caucasus has frimi the earUest ages
played an inqicrtant part as a harrier. Nortli of it, Herodotus
tells us, lived peoples who cared
nothing for the Great King. It
was the extreme Umit of the
known and the civilised world.
Beyond the mountains spread
the land of fable, of Gog and
Magog, of gold-guarding Grif-
fins, one-eyed Arimaspians, and
Amazons — of all the fabulous
creatures who pass slowly out
of the atlases of the learned
into the picture-books of the
nursery. When Roman rule
was estabUshed on the coast ol'
the Euxine, Chosroes and Jus-
tinian combined to maintain the
frontier post of the Darial
against the northern barbarians.
Never, until the Russian eagles
crossed the chain, did the same
empire
hold the lowlands on
ll.LiEK.S UF I'KISLIEH
both sides of it. The jjolitical condition of the basins of the
Kur and the Rion remained the same in its main features throughout
the Dark and the jNliddle Ages. The petty tributary states
which had grown up under the Romans maintained an obscure
and precarious existence between the Persians, the Tiuks, and
latterly the Russians. The Abkhasians came down to deal at the
factories on the coast with the Greeks, the Romans, and the
Genoese in succession. But in their mountain-fastnesses they
preserved a rude independence. Christianity, introduced at a very
early date from Byzantium, retained its hold on the majority