carefully one may see the diamond which has fallen
into the ocean,
But never again shall I see the life which has gone:
If one search patiently one may find a spring flower rooted in
the blue ice,
But never again shall I find the swift falcon which has flown
away.
Henceforth I live upon an earth which is no longer a world,
And in a world which has no longer a heaven.

There is a certain rude art in the way in which the asserted possibility
of two evident impossibilities is made to lead up to and heighten the
utter hopelessness of the third. The diamond may be recovered from the
depths of the ocean; the flower which has withered and died may spring
again even from glacier-ice; but the soul once gone is gone for ever:
the great disaster of death is irretrievable even in imagination. There
is no hint or suggestion here of any possible resurrection of the body
or of reunion beyond the grave: I cannot recall any Caucasian lament in
which there is. But whether the omission is due to the breaking down of
faith under the strain of grief, or whether it is conventionally
improper in a lament to allude to anything which would lighten the sense
of bereavement, I do not know.

With these two characteristic illustrations of the form of expression
which sorrow takes in Caucasian life, I must close my brief and
imperfect sketch of Caucasian literature. I hope I have amply proved the
assertions which I made in a previous paper with regard to the
originality and innate intellectual capacity of the Caucasian
highlanders; but whether I have or not, the reader must, I am sure,
admit that the proverbs, songs and anecdotes above translated are at
least indications of great latent capability, of unusual versatility of
talent, and of a wide range of human feeling and sympathy. It is
possible that I overestimate their value on account of my inability to
separate the impressions made upon me by the people themselves from
those made by their literature; but I am confident that the general
outlines of the Caucasian character as I have tried here to sketch them
are accurate, and that the reader would fully appreciate and admit the
significance of the literature if he could make the personal
acquaintance of the people.

In conclusion, I cannot better express my own opinion of the Caucasian
mountaineers than by adopting the words of A. Viskovatof, one of the
fa