of humor and in skill of literary treatment. The grotesque
statement of impossibilities with which it begins is the Caucasian
story-teller's conventional method of forewarning his hearers that they
are about to listen to a burlesque, a pure extravaganza, lying entirely
outside the domain of fact and reality. There is no attempt made to give
it the air of truth: on the contrary, the narrator takes especial pains
to demolish what little intrinsic probability the story has by
introducing the conventional formula, "Travelled little, travelled much,
travelled as far as a frog can jump," etc. This, like the jingle of a
court-jester's bells, is intended to remind the hearer that nothing is
to be taken seriously.

It is remarkable that men living in such wild, gloomy fastnesses as the
tremendous ravines of the Eastern Caucasus--men whose characters have
been hardened and tempered in the hot fires of war and the vendetta--men
who have the pride and fortitude of American Indians with the sternness
and ferocity of Scandinavian Berserkers--should still be capable of
appreciating and enjoying such anecdotes as "The Kettle that Died" and
"The Big Turnip," and such popular tales as "The Hero Naznai." The
fierce lust of war, which is perhaps the most salient feature of the
mountaineer's character, and the sternness and hardness of mental and
moral fibre which it tends to produce, are generally supposed to be
incompatible not only with the delicacy of perception upon which humor
largely depends, but with the very taste for humor itself; and yet in
the Caucasian mountaineer they are coexistent. How versatile the
Caucasian character is, and how wide is the range of its tastes and
sympathies, I shall show more fully hereafter.

The characters which figure in Caucasian popular tales are very
numerous, and are taken, as might be expected, from a great variety of
sources. There are the stereotyped three brothers of German and Russian
stories; the dragons, giants, were-wolves, wicked magicians, and
beautiful girls married to bears, of all Aryan folk-lore; and sundry
nondescript personages with superhuman powers which have no exact
analogues among the other Aryan races, and seem to be original products
of Caucasian fancy. Among the latter are _karts_, female ogres with
cannibalistic tastes; _narts_, or giants of protean shapes and variable
dispositions; and certain mysterious equestrians who are always
described as "hare-riders." These three