Prince Schamyl “The Lion of Daghestan,” and his sons
The most important river in Daghestan is the Terek, which is fed by a glacier on the slopes of that mystic mountain called Kasbek—16,546 feet in height—to which Prometheus was chained. None of the rivers in Daghestan are navigable, but an almost incredible amount of water power is going to waste for the lack of mechanical interest and ingenuity. The inhabitants are farmers and herdsmen; they plow their fields and reap their harvests and follow their flocks and herds with skill and diligence, but a Tartar never learns a trade. Agriculture is too profitable and permits too much leisure for enjoyment, to be exchanged for any other occupation by those pleasure-loving people. They work on their farms and in their orchards from the first of May to the first of September. During that period the custom of centuries forbids festivities, but after the crops are in, and the cattle and sheep have been brought down from the mountains into the plains, the Tartar population give themselves up to their native diversions for the rest of the year. They are a hospitable people, and whoever breaks bread or eats salt with them is protected and defended with their lives. A Tartar farmhouse is a hotel for travellers—a free house of call for the homeless. No hungry man was ever sent from a Tartar threshold, the exercise of hospitality being the most important article in their creed.
The women spend their lives at the looms and work up the wool from the flocks into marketable products—rugs, saddle-bags, blankets, and other coarse fabrics, which are admired for their design and finish. The rugs of Daghestan are found on the floors of every city in the world, and, while they do not compare with those from Persia or Bokhara and are graded as medium in value, they last forever. The people were formerly all Mohammedans, and all the Tartars are still—but the shifting tides of humanity have left adherents of all creeds, and a majority of the present inhabitants profess the faith of the orthodox Greek church and are under the spiritual jurisdiction of the patriarch at St. Petersburg.
There is a railway from Baku to Moscow, and through sleeping cars. The track hugs the shore of the Caspian Sea for more than a hundred miles, passing first through a flat, desolate desert, broken by many rocks of slate and mounds of sun-burned clay. But after several streams are crossed, mountains appear in the distance and the soil, as well as the climate, improves. The dryness of the desert is moistened by damp breezes that blow down from the Caucasus and bring life to the earth. It was a relief to see green meadows and pastures and verdure-covered hills, after our long sojourn among the barren wastes of Turkestan. The meadows were gay in their summer raiment. Wild flowers were fashionable that year, and the steppes of Daghestan were strewn with them, an almost infinite variety of colours.
The topography of the steppes of Daghestan resembles the steppes of North Dakota after harvest time. The surface of the earth undulates in great waves and ridges. Americans would call it a rolling prairie. The slopes that face the sun are yellow with the stubble of the grain that has been harvested. Vast herds of cattle and sheep are grazing on the northern slopes of the hills, and the absence of fences makes necessary the employment of shepherds, who wear long, greasy looking coats of sheepskin, with the wool inside. Their heads are covered with big shakos that look very heavy and very hot.
At night the sheep are herded in folds made of braided saplings which are planted and grown for that express purpose. A grove of elms or hickory or other flexible saplings can be planted at a slight expense, and when they are two or three years old they can be cut and braided like basket work. The herdsmen make litters eight or ten feet long and four or five feet wide, which, when supported by light posts, make a strong and “hog-tight” fence. Every ranchman has one, and moves it from pasture to pasture, following his flocks, and turns the sheep and lambs into this movable corral every night.
The men we saw around the railway stations are Tartars, whose love of society and excitement brings upon them the contempt of the phlegmatic Germans and Russians, who scorn such diversions. Their love of dress also excites the derision of their neighbours. They cling to the ancient Georgian costume and will not give it up. They wear the kalak—a long coat with a plaited skirt—and a hood of white woolen cloth, called a kabula, over their heads, with a long end and tassels hanging down their back. It is much more graceful than the fez but is not so dignified as the turban.
The Russian government is diverting immigrants to that section of the Caucasus from other parts of the empire. Although one of the oldest communities in the universe, it is still thinly settled. The revolution of the land-hungry peasants of European Russia in 1905 was followed by legislation in the duma similar to that of the British Parliament concerning Ireland, and the great estates are being purchased by the government, broken up into small farms and sold to the peasants on long time at a low rate of interest. This movement was hastened and the land owners were persuaded to sell by arguments similar to those used by the tenantry in Ireland. The landlords who still refuse to yield are having a hard time of it. Their barns are set on fire, their cattle are mutilated, their wheat fields are burned, and various other penalties are imposed upon them. There is now a law authorizing the compulsory expropriation of large estates, and the lands belonging to the crown and the church are being divided and disposed of slowly among peasant farmers imported from the more densely populated sections of central Russia.
There are many sturdy Germans there, descendants of immigrants who were induced to go into the Caucasus by Catherine the Great one hundred and twenty-five years ago. She gave them large grants of land and relieved them from taxation and military service, as an inducement to develop the natural wealth of her empire. By minding their own business they have managed to get along with the fiery-hearted and hot-tempered Tartars. The Germans make the best farmers and are the richest portion of the population. Armenians, Persians, and Greeks are the tradesmen and the same races furnish the mechanics and labourers. Representatives of all the races of central Asia are to be found there, and many of European stock, Latins and Greeks, Huns, Iberians, and Italians, because when the tidal waves of humanity, to which I have already referred, receded, a good deal of driftwood was always left behind.