If the reader will take the trouble to compare the above rendering of this story with the Hindoo variant entitled "The Valiant Chattee-Maker,"[4] and the closely-related German version called by Grimm "The Valiant Little Tailor,"[5] he will see how far it surpasses them both in unity of conception, in coherence of detail, in keen appreciation of humor and in skill of literary treatment. The grotesque statement of impossibilities with which it begins is the Caucasian story-teller's conventional method of forewarning his hearers that they are about to listen to a burlesque, a pure extravaganza, lying entirely outside the domain of fact and reality. There is no attempt made to give it the air of truth: on the contrary, the narrator takes especial pains to demolish what little intrinsic probability the story has by introducing the conventional formula, "Travelled little, travelled much, travelled as far as a frog can jump," etc. This, like the jingle of a court-jester's bells, is intended to remind the hearer that nothing is to be taken seriously. It is remarkable that men living in such wild, gloomy fastnesses as the tremendous ravines of the Eastern Caucasus--men whose characters have been hardened and tempered in the hot fires of war and the vendetta--men who have the pride and fortitude of American Indians with the sternness and ferocity of Scandinavian Berserkers--should still be capable of appreciating and enjoying such anecdotes as "The Kettle that Died" and "The Big Turnip," and such popular tales as "The Hero Naznai." The fierce lust of war, which is perhaps the most salient feature of the mountaineer's character, and the sternness and hardness of mental and moral fibre which it tends to produce, are generally supposed to be incompatible not only with the delicacy of perception upon which humor largely depends, but with the very taste for humor itself; and yet in the Caucasian mountaineer they are coexistent. How versatile the Caucasian character is, and how wide is the range of its tastes and sympathies, I shall show more fully hereafter.