Note (2) — 56.—How long ago it is since Machmet lived.

(2.) “the Yassen tongue, which the Infidels call Afs.”—The As, Yasses—the Alains, Alans of antiquity, are the Ossets of to-day, a people inhabiting a strip of territory in the middle of the great mountain range of the Caucasus, and who are believed to be the only connecting link between the Indo-Persian branch and the European branch of the great Indo-Germanic race. The population in 1873 was estimated at 65,000, of which number, it was supposed, 50,000 were Christians; the remainder being Mahomedans and Pagans, or a mingling of the three (The Crimea and Transc., i, 296, ii, 2).