. Savage Svânetia . and on his kmjal, and sodrive her away, triumphing m his to their reputed loyalty and obedience to 78 SAVAGE SVANETIA. their own princes, my readers can judge ofthat for themselves when I describe our stayat Betcho. The uncivilised Svans seem to me to havealready got what the Nihilists are seeking for,a democracy in which no man is greater thananother ; no man fears or worships a God, buteach is a law unto himself; all are equallyrich or rather equally poor, and no one eitherwields or submits to authority. When our pipes were lighted after supper,I pull
. Savage Svânetia . and on his kmjal, and sodrive her away, triumphing m his to their reputed loyalty and obedience to 78 SAVAGE SVANETIA. their own princes, my readers can judge ofthat for themselves when I describe our stayat Betcho. The uncivilised Svans seem to me to havealready got what the Nihilists are seeking for,a democracy in which no man is greater thananother ; no man fears or worships a God, buteach is a law unto himself; all are equallyrich or rather equally poor, and no one eitherwields or submits to authority. When our pipes were lighted after supper,I pulled out my note-book, and began to tryto draw out our host. He was a man ofEadcha, the next province, and consequentlyone who had once lived a life much morenearly resembling the life of civilised humanitythan that he was now leading. He hadalready passed, I think he said, eleven years ofhis life in Svanetia, and meant to pass a goodmany more there, until indeed his two boysshould have ceased to be an expense to WARRIOR OP GOORI. WARRIOR OF LESGHIA. I OUR HOST. 79 It gives yon an idea of the kind of manyon may often meet in Russia, when yon con-sider that the sons of our worthy host, bornamong these savage Svans, having passedtheir childhood amongst the hardships andpoverty of the village life of Mookmer, werethen, the one a young officer of artillery, andthe other studying for some profession at oneof the ffreat Russian universities. Whatwonder that men whose lives are so full ofsuch starthng contrasts, and whose purses areof necessity too empty to enable them to leadthe new life into which they are plunged, losetheir heads and become crazy with the folliesof Nihilism or any other violent and revolu-tionary gospel which they encounter on the threshold of their new lives! As our host seemed a man of considerableeducation for a Caucasian village priest, andas he had had ample opportunities of judgingof the people amongst whom his lot was cast, 80 SAVAGE SVANETIA. I shall t
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Keywords: ., bookcentury1800, bookdecade1880, booksubjectcaucasu, bookyear1883
