Daghestan has always been the prey of rival powers. It has been plundered and ravaged in turn by all the Asiatic hordes. Its soil has been fertilized by the blood of Persians, Greeks, Romans, Goths, Huns, Avars, Slavs, Mongols, Tartars, Turks. The "Golden Horde" swept over it once and again in the great tidal wave of war that lit up the two continents during the Middle Ages. It has been a battleground for twenty centuries, and the war-chargers of fifty armies have fattened upon its pastures.
The most important river in Daghestan is the Terek, which is fed by a glacier on the slopes of that mystic mountain called Kasbek — 16,546 feet in height — to which Prometheus was chained. None of the rivers in Daghestan are navigable, but an almost incredible amount of water power is going to waste for the lack of mechanical interest and ingenuity. The inhabitants are farmers and herdsmen; they plow their fields and reap their harvests and follow their flocks and herds with skill and diligence, but a Tartar never learns a trade. Agriculture is too profitable and permits too much leisure for enjoyment, to be exchanged for any other occupation by those pleasure-loving people. They work on theii* farms and in their orchards from the first of May to the first of September. During that period the custom of centuries forbids festivities, but after the crops are in, and the cattle and sheep have been brought down from the mountains into the plains, the Tartar population give themselves up to their native diversions for the rest of the year. They are a hospitable people, and whoever breaks bread or eats salt with them is protected and defended with their lives. A Tartar farmhouse is a hotel for travellers — a free house of call for the homeless. No hungry man was ever sent from a Tartar threshold, the exercise of hospitality being the most important article in their creed.
The women spend their lives at the looms and work up the wool from the flocks into marketable products — rugs, saddle-bags, blankets, and other coarse fabrics, which are admired for their design and finish. The rugs of Daghestan are found on the floors of every city in the world, and, while they do not compare with those from Persia or Bokhara and are graded as medium in value, they last forever. The people were formerly all Mohammedans, and all the Tartars are still — but the shifting tides of humanity have left adherents of all creeds, and a majority of the present inhabitants profess the faith of the orthodox Greek church and are under the spiritual jurisdiction of the patriarch at St. Petersburg.
There is a railway from Baku to Moscow, and through sleeping cars. The track hugs the shore of the Caspian Sea for more than a hundred miles, passing first through a flat, desolate desert, broken by many rocks of slate and mounds of sun-burned clay. But after several streams are crossed, mountains appear in the distance and the soil, as well as the climate, improves. The dryness of the desert is moistened by damp breezes that blow down from the Caucasus and bring life to the earth. It was a relief to see green meadows and pastures and verdure-covered hills, after our long sojourn among the barren wastes of Turkestan. The meadows were gay in their summer raiment. Wild flowers were fashionable that year, and the steppes of Daghestan were strewn with them, an almost infinite variety of colours.
The topography of the steppes of Daghestan resembles the steppes of North Dakota after harvest time. The surface of the earth undulates in great waves and ridges. Americans would call it a rolling prairie. The slopes that face the sun are yellow with the stubble of the grain that has been harvested. Vast herds of cattle and sheep are grazing on the northern slopes of the hills, and the absence of fences makes necessary the employment of shepherds, who wear long, greasy looking coats of sheepskin, with the wool inside. Their heads are covered with big shakos that look very heavy and very hot.
At night the sheep are herded in folds made of braided saplings which are planted and grown for that express purpose. A grove of elms or hickory or other flexible saplings can be planted at a slight expense, and when they are two or three years old they can be cut and braided like basket work. The herdsmen make litters eight or ten feet long and four or five feet wide, which, when supported by light posts, make a strong and "hog-tight" fence. Every ranchman has one, and moves it from pasture to pasture, following his flocks, and turns the sheep and lambs into this movable corral every night.