When the object of the meeting is to agree on an expedition against the enemy, the favorite topic and constant burden of eloquence is the oppression and the cruelty of the Russians. As the speaker dilates upon their burnings and shedding of blood, the aoul laid low by their artillery, the women violated, the youth carried away captive, the tribes gradually driven back into the mountains, his voice rages with indignation or wails in the plaintive tones of unaffected sorrow. His eye flashes beneath the shaggy, contracted brows; the clenched fist is relaxed only to grasp shaska or poniard; the blood rushes and returns from the cheek; and the chest heaves with violently struggling emotions. Mean-while in reply is heard the low, half-stifled sob; the irrepressible tears trickle down the sunburnt cheeks of those who weep for their country, if not their friends; teeth are clenched and brows are knit and sabres are half-drawn; while at intervals is responded amen! amen! and at the conclusion a shout of applause breaks from the universal throat, and rings through the air until the echoing hill-sides give it back to each other in boisterous accord. New laws are rarely made by this assembly, the tribe being governed very much by custom and ancient usage. Whenever these prove an insufficient rule of action, the Koran, in those parts of the mountains where it has been introduced, is appealed to. Of course, in a state of society so simple and unchanging there is little need of that constant lawmaking and unmaking deemed so indispensable in free and more civilized communities. Whatever rules of conduct have been longest established and found to meet the necessities of many generations, are by these primitive mountaineers held most sacred. To execute laws, therefore, not to make them, is the principal object of what little government exists in the Caucasus. Offenders are tried in the council ring; punishments consist mostly of fines, which if not paid by the guilty individual himself, must be by his family or his tribe; and crimes against persons which are not thus compounded are prosecuted by the injured party and those of his blood even to the third and fourth generations.