Caucasians

“ Their traits and geographical location have gained for the Caucasians the credit of being the oldest as well as the purest type of the white race, which indeed has been often called the “Caucasian” race. ”

“ Some ethnologists see in the Caucasus the primitive home of the Aryan family, from whom the Caucasians would, on this view, be an offshoot. The Ossets (q.v.) are certainly Aryan. The Caucasians are very warlike, and struggled till quite recently with success against the Russian domination.
Caucasic. One of the four great divisions of the human race. Type, white-skinned, square-jawed (orthognathous) , skull between broad and long (mesocephalic) , hair soft, straight, or wavy; in intelligence, enterprise, and civilisation, much superior to other divisions. ”

“ All who have seen the ethnographical maps of the Caucasus must have been struck by the motley appearance which they present; fifty various tribes may in fact be counted in this isthmus, the area of which is less than that of Spain. I shall speak here only of [Pg 354] the Caucasians properly so called—that is to say, of the peoples who dwell only in the Caucasus, putting on one side all others (Iranians, Europeans, Turks, Mongols, Semites, etc.) who have overflowed into this country from the adjacent regions. ”

“ The Caucasians include Mediterraneans, Semites, Nordics, Afghans, Alpines, and many more.
There are very few corners of knowledge more difficult than that of the Races of Men, the chief reason being that there has been so much movement and migration in the course of the ages. ”

“ On the whole, the greatest share of culture production has fallen to Caucasians. The art of Upper Palæolithic Europe, the laying of the foundations of modern civilization along the Nile and Euphrates six or seven thousand years ago, the more special ancient efflorescences like that of Crete, not to mention most of the advances of the last twenty-five hundred years, all fall to the account of the white race. ”

“ The Caucasians might be readily divided into a large number of races, each having definite characteristics. This is the case also with the Ethiopic class, for there is nearly as much difference between the New Hollanders and the woolly-headed Africans, included in the same department of the human species, and between a Bosjesmen, a Caffre, and a Negro of Soudan, who are also comprised in the Ethiopic variety, as between a Caucasian, Mongolian, and Malay. ”

“ Caucasians are natives of that portion of Russia lying between the Black and Caspian seas, are exceedingly gentle, good workers, good defenders of their hives, prolific, build many queen cells, and swarm often if confined to small hives. The workers are dark leaden gray in their general color, and present quite a ringed appearance because of the alternation of this dark color with the lighter fuzz which edges the segments of the abdomen. ”

“ It has also occurred, that from the spirit of conquest and peaceful colonization, nations belonging to the divisions of Blumenbach have become commingled, and have produced, by intermarriage, races which cannot be distinctly traced to either the one or the other of the parent classes. The Mongols, for instance, have spread out from central Asia and largely intermixed with the Caucasians, especially toward their western frontiers, while the Caucasians have intruded into every quarter of the globe, and blended themselves with the native inhabitants of the countries they have overrun. ”

“ But among the Caucasians, especially among the Teutons, this regressive force is chiefly lodged in certain classes of men, who are exceptional to the mass of the people, by an accidental position separated therefrom, and possessed of power thereover, which they use for their own selfish advantage, and against the interest of the people. They commonly aim at two things—to shun all the labour, and to possess all the government. ”

“ Caucasion in America.One of the most interesting of the many questions of large comprehensiveness which connect themselves with the penetration of the Mongolian race into America, which up till now it had been the fashion to regard as the inheritance of the Caucasians, is the relative capacity of labor possessed by both these two great races, who in the Western States of America have for the first time measured their mutual strength in friendly rivalry. ”

“ This statement does not mean that the American Indians are descended from the Chinese or Japanese, any more than the fact that these are denominated Mongolians implies belief in their descent from the particular modern people known as the Mongols. We call ourselves Caucasians without any intimation that our ancestors lived in the Caucasus mountains or that the present inhabitants of the Caucasus are a purer and more representative stock than we. ”

“ In Africa, the Caucasians are spread over the whole north, from the Mediterranean to the south of the Sahara Desert, and to the farthest border of Abyssinia as well as to the greater portion of South Africa. ”

“ Later Expansions.—The Caucasian race has now spread, through colonization, over the whole world, but its proper region is Europe, western Asia, and the northern strip of Africa Nine-tenths of the people of Europe belong to the Caucasian family, the other tenth consisting of the Turks, the Magyars (in Hungary) , the Finns, the Laplanders, and the tribe called Samoieds in the extreme northeast of European [276] Russia. In Asia, the Caucasians include the Arabs, the Persians, the Afghans, and the Hindus. ”

“ Natives of North-east Spain, mostly of Gothic descent, and still distinct from other Spaniards in language and costume. Honest and enterprising, turbulent, and intensely devoted to liberty.
Caucasians. One of the families of Caucasic Man, inhabiting the mountainous region of the Caucasus, and divided into southern, western, and eastern branches [see GEORGIANS, CIRCASSIANS, CHECHENZES, LESGHIANS] . They include a great number of different tribes, who seem to have settled there from the earliest historical times. ”

“ The birthplace, or the primitive station, of the race of men who peopled Europe and Western Asia, is supposed to have been Mount Caucasus. From this conjecture, Europeans and many Asiatic nations, and even some Africans, have received the new designation of Caucasians. The nations of Eastern Asia are imagined, in like manner, to originate in the neighbourhood of Mount Altaï, and they are named after the Mongolians, who inhabit the highest region in that vast chain of hills. The African negroes are derived from the southern face of the chain of Mount Atlas. ”

“ This has led to the importation into the British West Indies of a class of steadier and more reliable laborers, the low-caste Hindus, or coolies, from India. These slender-limbed and bronze-skinned Caucasians are, as a class, temperate, industrious, and frugal ”

“ A large proportion of the Caucasians have, however, maintained themselves in direct, prolific and unmixed lines for three hundred and seventy years, and their commercial and intellectual dominance has never been threatened. ”

“ The chief difficulty of the Caucasus as a shooting ground for Englishmen lies in the language of the country, which varies in every district. Either Russian or Georgian would probably be sufficient to carry a man through the whole country between the Black Sea and the Caspian, as he would generally find some one who spoke one or other of these tongues in every village he entered, and even if now and again he came to a hamlet where no one could understand his speech, the ordinary Caucasian is wonderfully apt at the language of signs. ”

“ But neither the severe climate nor the neighbourhood of wild and warlike hillmen shook their faith, and in the course of half a century, in one of the most unhealthy and unfertile localities in the Caucasus, they transformed this wilderness into flourishing colonies, and continued to live a Christian and laborious life, making friends with, instead of fighting, the hillmen. But the wealth to which they attained in the Caucasus weakened for a time their moral fervour, and little by little they began to depart somewhat from the requirements of their belief. ”

“ We know that if we leave Revelation out of the account, all Caucasian civilization, whether Aryan, Semitic, or Hamitic, can be traced backward till, just on the dawn of history, it narrows down to small clans or families, with whom the light began and from whom it spread. We know the same, also, as to the non-Caucasian Chinese and Nahua civilizations of Asia and America. Had the spread of the germs of these civilizations been prevented by conditions like those in Africa, who shall say that the stage of development might not be about the same to-day? ”

“ One of the most remarkable characteristics of the Caucasus is that, while it has acted as a barrier between the north and the south, stopping and turning aside the movements of population, it has also preserved within its sheltered recesses fragments of the different peoples who from time to time have passed by it, or who have been driven by conquest into it from the lower country. ”

“ And they knew that they were come to Caucasus, at the end of all the earth: Caucasus the highest of all mountains, the father of the rivers of the East. On his peak lies chained the Titan, while a vulture tears his heart; and at his feet are piled dark forests round the magic Colchian land.
And they rowed three days to the eastward, while Caucasus rose higher hour by hour, till they saw the dark stream of Phasis rushing headlong to the sea, and, shining above the tree tops, the golden roofs of King Aietes, the child of the Sun. ”

“ The curses of the Caucasus are as bitter and vindictive as its greetings are courteous and kind-hearted. I have often heard it said by the Persians and Tatars who live along the Lower Volga that there is no language to swear in like the Russian; and I must admit that they illustrated and proved their assertion when occasion offered in the most fluent and incontrovertible manner; but I am convinced, after having heard the curses of experts in all parts of the East, that for variety, ingenuity and force the profanity of the Caucasian mountaineers is unsurpassed. ”

“ If we consider the other extremes of mankind which we call the Caucasian, Japhetic, Bearded, and so forth, we find no certain sign that they constitute a distinct species. They have such diversities among themselves, and such intermingling resemblances to other divisions of humanity, that it is bewildering and, indeed, impossible to abide by any arbitrary distribution of them. In Asia, the Caucasian features are blended with the Mongolian, and Capuan or Negro, in a variety of degrees, in different localities, and under many nomenclatures. ”

“ People talk of Caucasia as if it were a nation. I cannot tell you how many tribes there are; but for the most part they hate one another, and they speak about seventy languages, and cannot write any one of their own. ”

“ Ripley calls the Caucasus "a grave of peoples, of languages, of customs and physical types."172 Its base, north and south, and the longitudinal groove through its center from east to west have been swept by various racial currents, which have cast up their flotsam into its valleys. The pueblos of our arid Southwest, essentially an area of asylum, are inhabited by Indians of four distinct stocks, and only one of them, the Moquis, show clearly kinship to another tribe outside this territory,173 so that they are survivals. ”

“ I brought back from the Caucasus a memory that was sunny and full of gratitude for the charming welcome that I found there. My aunt often gives me news from there and old friends still send me their remembrances, and with all my heart I send them the same.
The Caucasian has the right to be proud of his beautiful country, with its ever blue sky and its ever temperate climate which seems to give him that wonderful joie-de-vivre expression which appeals so deeply to the stranger, who is always struck by that warm and unforgettable charm of welcome which greets him at every turn. ”

“ How different has it been with the other great races we find in this country! The Caucasian, starting from the plateaus of Central Asia, has in turn inoculated all the great empires of the world with it civilization. The Brahmins of India, the founders of the Chinese Empire, the greatness of Babylon and of Ninevah, the glory of Tyre and of Sidon, the pride of Egypt, the wealth of Carthage, and the power of Rome, in fact all the civilizations, as you follow the Caucasian tribes westward through Germany, France, England, and to this country, are owing to the great Arian or Teutonic stock. ”

“ They [Pg 232] are among the most beautiful of the inhabitants of Caucasus, and more like the Georgians than the wandering Tartars of the Steppe. They are well formed, and have fine features, which are set off by large black eyes and a white skin. Their language resembles that of the Nogay-Tartars. They live in very neat houses, built of pine. Their children are strictly and well educated; and in general it may be said of them, that they are the most cultivated nation in Caucasus, surpassing all their neighbors in refinement of manners. ”

“ I have been over many thousands of miles of Russia afoot. The happiest times were in the Caucasus, by the Gorge of Dariel road, over the Cross Pass, or by the Rion valley over Mamison, or on the Caucasian shore of the Black Sea. When it is too hot to live in a house in a town, it is heaven on the mountains. Since the War, and the Revolution, the Caucasus has, unfortunately, become much more dangerous for travelers of all kinds. The tribes are warlike, and have been badly treated by Bolsheviks and Europeans in general. ”

“ The warlike tribes of the Caucasus have victoriously maintained their national independence; and in thus separating the trans-Caucasian provinces from the rest of the empire, they have protected Persia and Asiatic Turkey, and postponed indefinitely all thoughts of a Russian invasion of India. The cabinets of Europe have generally overlooked the importance of the Caucasus, and the part which its tribes are destined to play soon or late in eastern questions. ”