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. They are by no means satisfied with damning their adversary's soul after the vulgar manner of the Anglo-Saxon, but invoke the direst calamities upon his body also; as, for example, "May the flesh be stripped from your face!" "May your heart take fire!" "May eagles drink your eyes!" "May your name be written on a stone!" (_i.e._ a tombstone); "May the shadow of an owl fall on your house!" (this, owing probably to the rarity of its occurrence, is regarded as a fatal omen); "May your hearth-fire be put out!" "May you be struck with a hot bullet!" "May your mother's milk come with shame!" "May you be laid on a ladder!" (alluding to the Caucasian custom of using a ladder as a bier); "May a black day come upon your house!" "May the earth swallow you!" "May you stand before God with a blackened face!" "Break through into hell!" (_i.e._ through the bridge of Al Sirat); "May you be drowned in blood!" Besides these curses, all of which are uttered in anger, the mountaineers have a number of milder imprecatory expressions which they use merely to give additional force or emphasis to a statement. A man, for instance, will exclaim to another, "Oh, may your mother die! what a superb horse you have there!" or, "May I eat all your diseases if I didn't pay twenty-five _abaz_ for that _kinjal_ ("dagger") in Tiflis!" The curious expression, "May your mother die!" however malevolent it may sound to Occidental ears, has in the Caucasus no offensive significance. It is a mere rhetorical exclamation-point to express astonishment or to fortify a dubious statement. The graphic curse, "May I eat all your diseases!" is precisely analogous to the American boy's "I hope to die." Generally speaking, the mountaineers use angry imprecations and personal abuse of all kinds sparingly. Instead of standing and cursing one another like enraged Billingsgate fish-women, they promptly cut the Gordian knot of their misunderstanding with their long, double-edged daggers, and presently one of them is carried away on a ladder. When, as a Caucasian proverb asserts, "It is only a step from the bad word to the kinjal," even an angry man is apt to think twice before he curses once.