Caucasus and the Caucasians. The great mountain-range of the Caucasus forms the backbone of a well-marked geographical region, nearly corresponding with the Russian governor-generalship or lieutenancy of Caucasia. The natural and administrative northern limit is the great Manitch depression, extending from the Sea of Azov to the Caspian, and including the basins of the Kuban and Terek rivers. The southern natural limit is along the basins of the Rion and Kur rivers. The Russian province comprises all the Russian territory to the Turkish and Persian frontiers, including also part of the Armenian highlands and the mountain masses adjoining them, now known by the infelicitous name of Little Caucasus, south of the Rion and Kur rivers. Little or Anti-Caucasus is connected with Caucasus proper by the narrow Mesk ridge crossing the Rion-Kur Valley between the headwaters of those streams. The Sea of Azov and the Caspian seem at one time to have been connected by the Manitch depression; south of which extend vast steppes of flat treeless land—fertile, but with little or no water. South of the steppe to the northern spurs of the mountains is luxuriant park land covered with magnificent grasses, and also quite level. Beyond this rise the mountains in successive terraces. On the south side, towards the Rion and Kur, the mountain face is much steeper and more sudden.
The Caucasus occupies the isthmus between the Black Sea and the Caspian, its general direction being from west-north-west to east-south-east.
From the peninsula of Taman on the Black Sea, to the peninsula of Apscheron on the Caspian, it has a length of about 750 miles. The breadth, including the secondary ranges and spurs, is about 150 miles, but that of the higher Caucasus does not exceed 70 miles. This range is sometimes treated as part of the boundary line between Europe and Asia, but the region is really Asiatic in character (see ASIA). The higher and central part of the range is formed of parallel chains, not separated by deep and wide valleys, but remarkably connected by elevated plateaus, which are traversed by narrow fissures of extreme depth. The highest peaks are in the most central ridge or chain, at least six of them well over 16,000 feet, much exceeding the highest Alps. Mount Elburz attains an elevation of 18,540 feet above the sea; Kazbek reaches a height of more than 16,500 feet; and between these come Koshtantau and Dikh-tau. Here the line of perpetual snow is between 10,000 and 11,000 feet high; but the whole amount of perpetual snow is not great, nor are the glaciers very large or numerous. For more than 100 miles' length of the main ridge there are no passes lower than 10,000 feet. The central chain, in its highest part at least, is granitic or even pure granite. On either side of the granitic axis are metamorphic rocks, such as mica-schists and talc-schists; and beyond these, clay-slates and schists. The secondary parallel chains on both sides of the central ridge are of limestone. The spurs and outlying mountains or hills are of less extent and importance than those of almost any other mountain-range of similar magnitude, subsiding as they do until they are only about 200 feet high along the shores of the Black Sea. Some parts are entirely destitute of wood, but other parts are very densely wooded, and the secondary ranges near the Black Sea exhibit most magnificent forests of oak, beech, ash, maple, and walnut; grain is cultivated in some parts to a height of 8000 feet, while in the lower valleys rice, tobacco, cotton, indigo, &c. are produced. As might be expected from the geographical situation of the Caucasus, the climate, though it is generally healthy, is very different on the northern and southern sides, the vine growing wild in great abundance on the south, which is not the case on the north. The south declivity of the mountains towards Georgia presents much exceedingly beautiful and romantic scenery.
There are no active volcanoes in Mount Caucasus, but every evidence of volcanic action. Elburz and Kazbek are both of volcanic origin. There are hot springs and mud volcanoes at each end of the range, and there are also famous petroleum wells in the peninsula of Apscheron (see BAKU). Mineral springs also occur in many places, notably at Vladikavkaz. The bison, or aurochs, is found in the mountains; bears, wolves, and jackals are among the carnivorous animals. Lead, iron, sulphur, coal, and copper are found.
The waters of the Caucasus flow into four principal rivers—the Kuban and the Rion or Faz (the Phasis of the ancients), which flow into the Black Sea; and the Terek and the Kur, which flow into the Caspian. Kuban and Terek are north, Rion and Kur or Kura south of the mountains. The Russians have with great labour carried a military road through a valley somewhat wider than most of the Caucasian valleys. This is the tremendous fissure or ravine of the Dariel gorge about halfway from the Black Sea to the Caspian. The road passes over a height of about 8000 feet, and is protected by many forts. The only other road is by the Pass of Derbend, near the Caspian Sea. There is a railway from Baku by Tiflis to Poti and Batoum; Vladikavkaz is the terminus of the railway from the north.
CAUCASIAN was the name adopted by Blumen- bach (q.v.) for one of his main ethnological divisions of mankind; and as the Georgian skull he had was the finest in his collection, the Caucasian was taken as the finest type of the Indo-European stock. Subsequent ethnologists have, mainly on philological grounds, broken up the Caucasian variety of Blumenbach into two well-marked philological groups, the Aryan (q.v.) and the Semitic peoples (q.v.). The name Caucasian was clearly a misnomer when it suggested affinity in blood or in language between the very various races of the Caucasus, classified below, and Aryans or Semites; and Prichard and others proposed actually to connect most of the Caucasus peoples with the Mongolian races of Asia. Later anthropologists, finding the word convenient, use Caucasian or Caucasian for the Fair type of man as opposed to the Mongolic or Yellow type. But they distinctly repudiate any suggestion of community of race or of language between the peoples so named; and desire to indicate a physical fact and an anthropological type. See ETHNOLOGY; also PHILOLOGY.
The Caucasus has been called the Mountain of Languages from the multiplicity of tongues spoken in this narrow area—tongues many of them totally distinct from one another, and, with one exception, apparently unconnected with the languages of any other part of the globe, or race of men; though both Aryan and Turkoman affinities have been alleged for Georgian, and Sayce has suggested that the ancient Hittites (q.v.), whose empire in Asia Minor rivalled that of the Assyrians, were of the same stock. There are certain well-marked groups amongst them, within which manifest affinity prevails. (1) The Southern division or Kartveli stock comprises the Georgians or Grusians, mainly in the upper and middle basin of the Kur; the Imeritians, west of the watershed between the Kur and Rion; the Mingrelians, farther west reaching to the Black Sea; the Gurians, south of the Rion; the Laz, on the Turkish frontiers; and the Svans or Suanetians, between the Mingrelians and the higher Caucasus. (2) The Western division contains the Tcherkess or Circassian race, formerly on the left bank of the Kuban, north of Caucasus; the Abkhazians in the narrow strip of land between the Caucasus and the Black Sea on the south; and the Kabards, north and east of Elburz. (3) The Eastern division contains the Chechenz or Tchetchens on the northern slopes of the Eastern Caucasus down to the Terek; and the Lesghians farther east and south. It is doubtful whether the numerous small tribes called Lesghians have any affinity with the Tchetchens, or how far they are related to one another; only one, the Avars, have a written language, and they use Arabic characters. (4) The Ossetes or Ossetians in the centre of Caucasus, on both slopes about Kazbek, are unquestionably a race of the Aryan stock, and the language has affinity with the Persian branch; they call themselves Irun (probably meaning Aryan). The Kartveli group may contain 850,000 persons; the Western group, 130,000; the Eastern, 520,000; the Ossetian, 120,000. All the Caucasian languages are extremely harsh. Some of them are partially inflectional; all save the Ossetian are substantially agglutinative.
In various portions of this territory there are of course other intrusive elements of population of foreign race: Russian Slavs; Tartars; numerous Armenians; Kurds; Greeks; Tats and other Iranians or Tajiks; and a German colony from Wiirttemberg, east of Tiflis. Not merely do the inhabitants of the Caucasus differ widely in race, but they represent great variety of stages of culture, from the indolent, music-loving Georgians to the wild and semi-barbarous Suanetians. Christianity is the faith of some races, as the Georgians and Ossetes; Mohammedanism of a fanatical type that of others, as the Lesghians; while primitive pagan superstitions seem largely to underlie both religious professions. One Kartvelian tribe, the Khevurs, has in some measure combined Christianity with Moslem usages.
The resistance which the Caucasian peoples for more than half a century offered to the arms of Russia attracted to them the attention of the world. But with the capture in 1859 of Shamyl, the prophet chief of the Lesghians, who for more than twenty years withstood the armies sent against him, the power of the Caucasians was shattered; by 1870 it was completely broken. The bulk of the Circassians migrated to Turkish territories in Asia or Europe; most of the Abkhasians have done the like. The ancient divisions of the country, Georgia, Imeritia, Svanetia, Mingrelia, &c., were based on tribal distinctions. These have disappeared from the Russian administrative system. According to the latter, the main range of Caucasus divides the province into Ciscaucasia, north of the mountains, and Transcaucasia to the south of them; the former comprising the governments of Stavropol, Kuban, Terek; the latter, those of Daghestan (really north of Caucasus), Sakatal, Tiflis, Kutais, Sukhum, Black Sea, Elisabetpol, Baku, and Erivan. Add Batoum and Kars (Russian Armenia), and the Transcaucasian territory, and then Caucasus in the widest sense has an area of 308,000 sq. m., and a pop. of 6,290,000. The chief town in Ciscaucasia is Vladikavkaz; in Transcaucasia, Tiflis; the two connected by the great military road through the Caucasus. The old capital of Georgia was Mtzkhet, a good specimen of a Georgian word. For Caucasus and Ciscaucasia, see the map of Russia, Vol. VIII., and the articles CIRCASSIANS, GEORGIA, IMERITIA, TRANSCAUCASIA, and, for the wars with Russia, SHAMYL; also Freshfield, The Exploration of the Caucasus (1897); Cuningham, Eastern Caucasus (1872); Bryce, Transcaucasia (1878); Phillipps-Wolley, Savage Svanetia (1883); Mourier, Contes et Légendes du Caucase (1888); Abercromby, A Trip through the Eastern Caucasus (1890).