Page:Folk-lore - A Quarterly Review. Volume 2, 1891.djvu/183

 Rh by the Sauromatai, Maiotai, and other Sarmatian tribes. When Georgio Interiano visited them in the middle of the 15th century the Cherkes extended from the Don along the Sea of Azov as far south as Abkhasia, which thus gave them, according to his estimation, a coast line of five hundred miles. Before his time, till driven out by the Tartars, they had settlements in the Crimea. Until recently they peopled the country between Taman and the confines of the Abkhas country, as well as the great and little Kabardá. There is, therefore, considerable ground for assuming that the Sarmatai, including the Sauromatai, Maiotai, and the many other tribes into which they were sub-divided, whom ancient writers aver to have been Caucasians, to have had racial affinity with the Iberians, to have been different from Scythians, in Herodotus' narrow sense of the word, and to have had Amazons among them, are now represented by the Cherkes and Abkhas, or Absne, who occupy, or have occupied, much of the same geographical area, who are Caucasians, who are certainly more nearly related to the Georgians than to any non-Caucasian people, who are anaryan and allophyl as regards Tatars, Mongols, and Finno-ugrians, and who retain the custom of flattening the breasts during maidenhood.

It now remains to compare what is reported of the Amazons with existing customs of the Cherkes and