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During the two following days I passed through countless villages of the various tribes of the north Caucasus, and if this preliminary excursion did nothing more it, at least, disclosed to me the tremendous difficulties of civil administration in this wild region, and above all else the utterly blind, fanatical policies that have been pursued by the Russian government during the last twenty-five

A Cossack village—Province of the Don

A group of Don Cossacks at breakfast

years, which is the period when her armies just began their sanguinary march into this ancient corner of the world. What these people need is not military subjection, but education, enlightenment, and contact with civilization, and an administration based on the principles of humanity and the enlightenment born of learning and culture. But it is outside of my present purpose to suggest what ought to be or what might be; it is rather my restricted duty to give the picture of the scene as I found it unfolded before me—all these different villages of the many tribes of Caucasia, living in their backwardness and their idleness; knowing not the advantages of education, consequently craving it not; crude in their superstitions; quaint in their customs; bold and medieval in their attitude toward their fellow-men. On the south slopes of the Caucasus as well as here on the north slopes are these villages found; though instead of being Circassian, Kabardine, and Ossettes, they are Mingrelians, Kurds, Georgians, Gurians, Persians, Medo-Persians, Tartars, Armenians, and other tribes spilled out of Asia. The crying need universally throughout the region is for a wise administration, making for increased enlightenment and education, instead of which is maintained the brutal iron régime of militarism.