So far is the true mountaineer from being afraid of death, that he seems to take a savage pleasure in imagining it in its most horrible forms and dwelling upon its most repulsive and terrifying features, merely to have the satisfaction of triumphing over it in fancy. As an illustration of this I give below a part of another Chechense song called "The Song of Khamzat." Khamzat was a celebrated _abrek_, or Caucasian Berserker, who harried the Russian armed line of the Terek with bloody and destructive raids before and during the reign of the great Caucasian hero Shamyl. He was finally overtaken and surrounded by a large Russian force on the summit of a high hill near the river Terek, called the Circassian Gora. Finding it impossible to escape, he and his men slaughtered their horses, built a breastwork of their bodies, and behind this bloody half-living wall fought until they were literally annihilated. The song of which the following are the closing lines was composed in commemoration of Khamzat's heroic defence and death. Just before the final Russian onset he is supposed to see a bird flying over the field of battle in the direction of his native village, and he addresses it as follows: O aërial bird! carry to Akh Verdi Mohammed, the ruler of Hikka, our last farewell: Bid good-bye to our sweethearts, the fair girls of Hikka, And tell them that our breasts are a wall which will stop the Russian bullets: Tell them that we had hoped to lie in the graveyard of our native village, Where our sisters would have come to weep over our graves, Where sorrowful relatives would have gathered to mourn our death. But God has not granted us this last favor: instead of the weeping of sisters, Over us will be heard the growls of fighting wolves; Instead of sorrowing relatives, here will assemble clouds of croaking ravens: The ravens will drink up our eyes and the bloodthirsty wolves will devour our bodies. Tell them all, O bird! that on the Circassian mountain, in the land of the infidel, With naked sabres in our hands, we all lie dead. The reader who merely sees this song on a printed page in an imperfect prose translation can form little conception of the thrilling effect which it produces when sung by an excited woman to the fierce wild music of the Caucasian highlanders amid a group of Khamzat's fiery and sensitive countrymen. Their faces flush with strong emotion, their hands close with nervous grip upon the hilts of their long kinjals, and their bright eyes slowly fill with tears of mingled grief, rage and pity as the excited singer wails out the dying words of their lost leader.