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Caucasus all the rest of that day and far into the night.

I was glad to find that a trip through western and central Daghestan was regarded by Captain Cherkassof as perfectly practicable and reasonably safe. The Russians had pacified the country only in part after their long war with the mountaineers, and I had been told by almost everybody whom I had consulted that if I ventured far back into the interior, away from the Russian posts, I should take my life in my hands. Captain Cherkassof, however, did not think so.

"Daghestan," he said, "is a wild country, made up for the most part of mountains, precipices, deep gloomy gorges, and roaring torrents; but there are a good many native settlements scattered through it and a few Russian forts. The roads are only bridlepaths, and they run in zigzags, at almost impossible angles, up and down breakneck cliffs and slopes; but the sure-footed mountain horses are used to them, and the steep descents and devil's bridges' are not so dangerous as they look. As for the inhabitants, they belong to half a dozen different racial stocks, from Arabs and Jews to Teutons and Mongols. They are a fighting people, fierce, brave, and proud, but they are extremely hospitable. Every house has its guest chamber, and one of their proverbs says, 'A guest-a man from God.' The state of society, of course, is that of the tenth century -or possibly I might say the first. We haven't been in control long enough to change things much, and in many of the mountain aouls you might easily imagine yourself in ancient Gaul in the time of Cæsar."

"It all sounds interesting," I remarked, and I think I shall like it."

"Yes," he agreed, "it's interesting enough, but very primitive. It's like living in a longpast historic time."

At breakfast on the following morning I brought up the important question of ways and means, and I asked Captain Cherkassof what chance there was of getting horses, an escort, and an interpreter for my proposed trip.

There will be no trouble about horses and escort," he replied. “The starshina will have to give you those on your open order' from the commandant in Veden. The question of an interpreter is more difficult. mountaineers in Daghestan speak fifteen or twenty different languages, and you ought to have a man who knows at least five or six of

The

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them. How long a trip do you expect to make?"

"I thought I would go to Timour-khanShura," I replied, " by way of Andi, Botlekh, and Khunzakh. It may take a couple of weeks. I can't stay in the mountains much longer than that, anyway, because winter is coming on and the passes will be blocked with snow."

Captain Cherkassof thought for a moment, and then said: "Suppose I give you my interpreter. I can spare him for two or three weeks. He speaks Russian fairly well, and knows seven of the mountain languages besides. He is an Avar by birth, and is better acquainted with the people of Daghestan than any other man I know. He's a tenthcentury barbarian, of course; but you won't mind that. Grip him firmly and hold him with sea-urchin mittens, and you won't have any trouble with him."

I did not feel at all sure of my ability to hold a tenth-century barbarian "with seaurchin mittens;" but, as I had had some experience with primeval men in various parts of the world, I thought I might perhaps get along with him.

"I'll take him," I said, "if you can spare him and he'll go."

"Oh, he'll go fast enough," replied the captain. "He's a born brodyag [rover, vagabond, or free adventurer], and such a trip will just suit him."

Ten minutes later the interpreter silently entered the room, greeted Captain Cherkassof with a formal military salute, took off his high, muff-shaped sheepskin hat, and stood at attention. He was a tall, athletic man, perhaps fifty years of age, with a rugged, deeply lined face and the fierce blue eyes that one sees now and then among the Highlanders of Scotland. His closely clipped and bristly hair was sprinkled with gray, but his beard and mustache had been dyed a bright, peculiar red with henna. The broad white seam of a scar crossed his forehead above and between the eyes, and seemed to give-by suggestion perhaps—an added fierceness to the naturally stern expression of his face. He was dressed in the longskirted black coat of the Daghestan mountaineers, with a row of ivory ammunition tubes across his breast, and the silver galloon of a red silken under-tunic showing at his

throat. From a silver-studded leathern belt hung diagonally across his body in front the long, straight dagger known in the Caucasus as kinjal; and thrust through the belt, in the small of his back, was a heavy single-barreled pistol with a globular butt. Both weapons were richly mounted, and the sheath of the kinjal was ornamented with arabesques of silver niello work. As he stood there, with impassive face, paying no attention to me, but gazing fixedly at Captain Cherkassof, he was a striking and impressive figure.

"Akhmet," said the captain, "this is a foreign traveler from the other side of the great ocean, who is about to make a trip into Daghestan. He wants an interpreter. Will you go?"

deep, gloomy gorge of the Andiski Koisu; the cliff-girdled mountain of Gunib, where the great Caucasian leader Shamyl made his last stand against the Russians; and above and beyond them all the white, snowy peaks of the main range stretching away in a long, serrated line toward the coast of the Caspian Sea.

On the snow-powdered summit we stopped a few moments for lunch. Akhmet doffed his muff-shaped wool hat and took out of the space between the crown and the facing a thin pancake of unleavened bread, a piece of dried meat, and a couple of hard-boiled eggs. Meanwhile I produced from my saddle-bags some cheese and white bread, half a cold fowl, and a bottle of red native wine, which Captain Cherkassof's boy had put up

"Be off, then, and get your horse. Take food to Andi "--the first large anul in Daghestan. "The starshina will furnish a mounted guard and another horse."

Half an hour later Akhmet and I, with a heavily armed Chechense horseman as escort, were climbing the zigzag road that led to the summit of the Andiski Khrebet. Just before we started Captain Cherkassof had given the red-bearded interpreter, as a farewell stirrup cup, a brimming tumbler of colorless Russian vodka; but I could not see that it had the slightest effect upon him. His scarred, saturnine countenance showed no change of expression, and he did not speak either to me or to the Chechense escort until we reached the crest of the titanic divide and looked out from a height of eight thousand feet over the wild, rugged landscape of western Daghestan. Then, at sight of his native Avaria, his face seemed to brighten a little, and, turning to me, he pointed out the approximate location of his birthplace; the ve-thousand-foot precipice of Gimry; the

not only with tenth-century barbarians, but with savages of the stone age, had taught me that it is always good policy to share food and drink; so I gave Akhmet a part of my lunch, including the wine, and took in return a part of his. This immediately improved our social relations and seemed to throw a bridge of gastronomic and convivial sympathy across the gap between the tenth century and the nineteenth. Before we finished the bottle of wine, the cold boiled fowl, the jerked meat, and the unleavened bread I had taken several steps backward toward tenth-century barbarism, while Akhmet had acquired a few glimmering ideas of nineteenth-century civilization. We had educated each other. But my education was still far from complete, and the tenth century had prepared for me a serious "jolt."

About half-way down the eastern slope of the range we passed through a village of closely packed, flat-roofed houses, which suggested in general appearance a pueblo of the Arizona Indians. As we rode through the narrow, hall-like streets, all of the old and middle-aged men who were sunning themselves and gossiping in front of their houses rushed forward to clasp hands and press thumbs with Akhmet, who seemed to know them all and to speak with fluency their guttural, clickful tongue. As we rode out of the village I remarked casually to the interpreter:

"That sounds to me like a very difficult language; how did you ever learn it ?"

Oh," he replied, nonchalantly, "many years ago, when I was young, I killed a man and had to flee to this village to escape his

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blood avengers.

While I was living here I

learned the language."

This explanation Akhmet made in a perfectly matter-of-fact way, as if killing a man. were a natural episode in normal human experience. I was a little startled to find, myself associated in that wild and lawless region with a homicide; but I did not think it prudent to ask for details. "Very likely," I reflected, "he killed the man in self-defense, so that he isn't really a murderer." But I soon discovered that I had not yet got back, mentally, into the tenth-century atmosphere.

We slept that night in another village, ten or fifteen miles farther along, where the people spoke another language, but where Akhmet seemed to be as much at home socially and linguistically as he had been in the first one.

"How did you happen to get acquainted with these people and learn this language?" I asked, as we were smoking and drinking tea together early in the evening.

"Many years ago," he replied, "when I was young, I killed a man, and I went into kanle here."

I

"When you kill a man" (as if I were likely ever to kill a man!), "the adat [customary law] says that you must take refuge in some distant village, where his blood avengers are not likely to follow you. took refuge here, and it was two years before I could make peace with my blood-seekers. May they stand before God with blackened faces!" he added, fiercely. "They were stiff necked, and I had to pay them five horses."'1

Slowly I began to get the tenth-century point of view. Killing men and "going into kanle" were not extraordinary occurrences, and the state of society in which such things happened was perfectly normal.

In the development of human society this was prob ably the first regulation of the blood feud. The community had not yet come to regard homicide as a crime that it should forbid and punish; but, in order to restrict bloodshed as far as possible, it decreed that the killer must not expose himself unnecessarily to the danger of being killed in turn. He must go into kanie," or, in other words, remove himself from the neighborhood of his blood-seekers, until time and the cooling of passion shoul make possible the settling of the feud by means of a payment in the nature of compensation for the injury done to the family of the killed.

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'Not exactly a fight. We had a dispute, and he said a bad word to me. I drew my kinjal—and—batz ! it was done."

I made no comment, and Akhmet, taking my silence as a possible indication of disapproval, inquired in turn:

"What do you do in your country when a man says a bad word to you ?”

"Knock him down," I replied, "or perhaps call the police; it depends on circumstances."

Humph! Yours must be a sheep's life." I ought, perhaps, to have made my statements with some reservations and exceptions; but I did not see how I could do this or furnish the necessary explanations without finally casting reflections upon the character of Akhmet himself, and at that stage of our acquaintance it did not seem wise to say any thing that might be construed as a "bad word." I had already heard, moreover, the significant and oft-repeated Daghestan proverb, "Hold your tongue and you'll save your head." I therefore contented myself with saying that different peoples had different customs-a trite but reasonably safe remark.

Two or three days passed before the subject of homicide came up again, and by that time Akhmet and I had made some progress toward intimacy. He had discovered that, although I was a foreigner, from a country of which he had never heard, I was nevertheless a human being with some sympa

1 In the oldest written code of Caucasian customary law, drawn up in Arabic several centuries ago, this proverb stands at the head of every paragraph.

thetic intelligence; and I had found that although he was a tenth-century barbarian, his social behavior in certain situations showed as much tact, consideration, and delicacy of feeling as mine. One day, for example, about noon, after climbing three thousand feet or more up an almost precipitous mountain slope, we rode into a high mesa village where the only inhabitants seemed to be boys and girls from four to ten years of age. These children, of course, did not live there alone all the time. The adult members of their families had gone down into a neighboring valley to harvest Indian corn, and they had left the younger boys and girls at home to tend the babies and keep house.

Without knocking for admittance, Akhmet threw open the door of the best-looking dwelling in the settlement and walked in. The only occupants of the house were two little girls, apparently about six and nine years of age. At sight of two strange men, one heavily armed and the other dressed in a terrifying foreign costume, the children seemed to be half paralyzed with the shock of surprise and fear; but they soon rallied, and the elder, remembering that in the absence of her parents she was invested with the duties and responsibilities of the family, beckoned us to follow, and, conducting us to the guest chamber, invited us to take seats on a broad, rug-covered divan. Then, bowing to us with a courtesy that was half womanly and half childish, she retired. Five minutes later her little six-year-old sister came in, trembling with fear, and offered to us on a huge circular bronze tray two bunches of grapes-the only refreshments they had been able to find in the house that seemed to them worthy of our acceptance. The poor little tot was so frightened as she approached me that her trembling shook the tray; but she knew her duty, and, rallying all her spiritual forces, she performed it with a courage that was as admirable as it was touching. It may well be doubted whether two New England children left alone in the house and surprised by the sudden incoming of a cowboy and a bashi-bazouk would have given such an exhibition of the two noble virtues-hospitality and courage.

But the behavior of Akhmet, the mediæval barbarian, was equally surprising. Not only did he strive in every way to encourage and reassure the children, but he treated the elder girl especially with as much respect and

deference as if she were de jure, as well as de facto, the "lady of the house." When we took our leave, he bowed low to her, with bared head, and thanked her with what might fairly be described as " ornamental earnestness" for the shelter and hospitality that we had enjoyed.

As we rode together day after day through the wild gorges of western Daghestan and sat together night after night in the guestrooms of mountain houses I encouraged Akhmet to talk frankly about his early life. At first he seemed reticent and reserved; but, finding that I was making an honest effort to understand his environment and look at things from his point of view, he gradually gained confidence, and finally related to me, without any attempt at justification or selfdefense, the most extraordinary stories of adventure, lawlessness, and crime that I had ever heard. It did not seem to occur to him that I might be shocked by the purposes he avowed and the actions he described, and he told me the story of his life just as he would have told it to a brother-barbarian of whose perfect comprehension and sympathy he felt

sure.

One day, for example, he gave me in a matter-of-fact but graphic way an account of an attempt that he made in early manhood to kill an aged Kumik and carry off the latter's young wife.1 It happened, he said, when he was a young and unmarried man about twenty-five years of age. He had started one summer day with a raiding party of twentyfive or thirty Avars on a cattle-lifting expedition in the territory of a hostile clan. In riding through a Kumik village, on the way to the scene of action, Akhmet happened to see in the street a very beautiful young Kumik girl. girl. With the impetuosity of his age and temperament, he fell in love with her at sight, and, halting his party, he proceeded to make inquiries about her. To his great disgust, he found that, although she was only sixteen or seventeen years of age, she was already married to an old Kumik. That such a pearl of young womanhood should be married at all was bad; that she should be married to a despised Kumik was worse; and that she should be the property of an old man—a man three or four times her age-was simply intolerable. It was a violation of the laws of nature which ought not to be permitted.

In

The Kumiks were a Daghestan tribe of Turkish origin who were looked down upon by the Lesghian mountaineers as interiors.

1916.

less than half an hour Akhmet made up his mind to kill the old husband and carry off the young wife. Making known his intentions to his companions, he let them go on the raid without him. He then called together the head man and three or four leading Kumiks of the settlement and explained to them that he was a sword-maker, and that he had come to the village for the purpose of taking a house and beginning there the manufacture of kinjals.

No question seems to have been raised as to the sincerity of Akhmet's professions, and he was able in a few days to rent a house and settle down. His first move was to give one evening a sort of house-warming, to which he invited all the villagers, including the old Kumik and his young wife. Then, with his horse in readiness, he went out and lay in wait for the old Kumik, intending to ambush him, kill him, and carry off the girl. The old Kumik, however, seems to have become suspicious of Akhmet at an early stage in the proceedings, and, instead of coming to the entertainment, he and his wife remained quietly at home.

Having proceeded thus far in his narrative, Akhmet stopped and seemed to be lost in gloomy reflections.

"Well," I said, "what did you do then?" "Do then? One night, after dark, I tried to bring him out as a peacemaker. I got up a sham quarrel with one of my neighbors and sent for him to act as arbitrator."2

"Did he come?" I inquired, as Akhmet again paused.

"No; the cowardly old pig! And it was

All things manufactured in Daghestan at that time were made by individuals in private houses. There were no factories of any kind, and industries were only just beginning to be specialized. For centuries every family had been accustomed to make at home everything that it used. Then some family would acquire a reputation for the excellence of its pistols, kinjals, rugs, or saddles, and would proceed to specialize, devoting itself exclusively to the manufacture of the particular thing that it could make best.

2 This is the most urgent call that can be made upon a man in any part of the eastern Caucasus. Quarrels there are so likely to result in homicides and feuds that one who is asked to act as arbitrator feels it a sacred duty to do so.

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so dark where I watched that I came near killing another man in his place."

“Wouldn't it have been simpler,” I asked, "to climb into one of his windows some nigh and kill him at home?”

"Kill him in a house!" exclaimed Akhmet, apparently shocked. "In our Daghestan you can't kill a man in a house."

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You can't? Why not?"

"There is no adat for it. It would be dishonorable. You mustn't kill even your blood enemy in a house."

This exposition of tenth-century ethics left me dumb with amazement. According to Akhmet, you might honorably invite a man to an evening party and kill him while he was coming as your guest to your entertainment, or you might properly ambush and murder him when he was coming at your request to act as arbitrator in your quarrel; but it would be disgraceful to kill him in a house. He must be assassinated in the open.

I cannot now remember all the stratagems to which Akhmet resorted in his effort to get the old Kumik out of doors, where he might be killed with perfect propriety and in strict accordance with the customary law (adat), but they all failed. The suspicious husband and his young wife never left their house at night, and never in the daytime unless they were accompanied by friends enough to protect them.

As he told the story Akhmet became visibly more and more excited by the recollection of his disappointment. His face flushed with color, the veins stood out in his neck and temples, and when he finally admitted that he had to leave the village and return to his home without accomplishing his object he brought his clenched fist down heavily upon the flat pommel of his saddle and appealed to me, as a man and a brother, to know if it was not a shame and an outrage that the old Kumik would not come out of doors and be killed.