Note 1377 — Chapter XVI · —Influences Of A Mountain Environment

A report on the situation in the Caucasus, addressed to Czar Nicholas in 1829, contains an epitome of the history of mountain peoples. It runs as follows: "The Circassians bar out Russia from the south, and may at their pleasure open or close the passage to the nations of Asia. At present their intestine dissensions, fostered by Russia, hinder them from uniting under one leader; but it must not be forgotten that, according to traditions religiously preserved among them, the sway of their ancestors extended as far as to the Black Sea. * * * The imagination is appalled at the consequence which their union under one leader might have for Russia, which has no other bulwark against their ravages than a military line, too extensive to be very strong."1377 Here we have the whole story—a mountain people pillaging the lowlands, exercising a dangerous and embarrassing control over the passes, and thereby calling down upon themselves conquest from without; weakened by a contracting territory within the highlands and a shrinking area of plunder without, doomed to eventual defeat by the yet more ominous weakness of political dismemberment.