Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 34.djvu/395

Rh summits in double lines, in the troughs between which lie vast névés. On either flank of the rigid granites lie beds of friable schists, whose green, rounded outlines afford a striking contrast to the snowy precipices of the great chain on which they abut. On the south Suanetia is fenced in by the lofty slate ridge of the Leila, which, running parallel to the main chain, attains a height of over twelve thousand feet, and bears very considerable glaciers toward its western end. In this direction the river escapes, between high spurs of the two chains, through a narrow porphyritic gorge, which is not at present passable for horses. On the east a low, grassy down (eight thousand six hundred feet), only sixteen hundred feet above the highest villages, leads into a pathless maze of forests and flowers—the wilderness in which the Skenes Skali, a tributary of the Rion, has its sources. Within these ridges and gorges the inhabitants have lived for centuries, isolated from the outer world, forgetting and forgotten.

They are first mentioned by Strabo, under the name of Soani, as a powerful nation; but Suaneti, as far as I could learn, is what they now call themselves. At the last census they numbered about twelve thousand. Over one third of the race, known from the native prince who ruled over them as the Dadian's Suanetians, live on the upper Skenes Skali. They have been more or less merged in the surrounding Mingrelian populations. The Suanetians are mentioned by Pliny and Procopius. Their country was reserved by Chosroes for Persia in his treaty with Justinian. It was converted to Christianity before the tenth century, and covered with small chapels or churches. Seven hundred years ago it formed part of the kingdom of Queen Thamara, the heroine who occupies the place of Alexander or Charlemagne in Georgian legend. The Suanetians still chant ballads in her honor. Suanetia soon fell off from the Georgian kingdom. It became, at some time in the last century, wholly unattached. Since that time the district has enjoyed a complete form of communal rule. Each community is made up of several villages, originally consisting each of members of the same family or gens, but now including several families. Members of the same family can not intermarry. Women and pasturage rights have been occasions of many feuds and vendettas. When a woman changed hands or husbands, the parties concerned could not always agree on the value in cattle—the Suanetians had no money—of the lady exchanged. Hence arose assaults of persons and batteries of towers. The affairs of the hamlet, so far as they were not settled by appeals to arms, were regulated by an assembly of adult males, in which unanimity was required for a valid decision. The foreign relations of the Suanetians consisted, for the most part, in predatory excursions into their neighbors' pastures. They were