(2.) “the Yassen tongue, which the Infidels call Afs.”—The As, Yasses—the Alains, Alans of antiquity, are the Ossets of to-day, a people inhabiting a strip of territory in the middle of the great mountain range of the Caucasus, and who are believed to be the only connecting link between the Indo-Persian branch and the European branch of the great Indo-Germanic race. The population in 1873 was estimated at 65,000, of which number, it was supposed, 50,000 were Christians; the remainder being Mahomedans and Pagans, or a mingling of the three (_The Crimea and Transc._, i, 296, ii, 2). An unpretending sketch of this interesting people, twice alluded to by the author (in chapter 61 he speaks of them as the Jassen and Affs), is here submitted. The earliest mention of the Alans is made by Josephus (_Wars_, VII, vii, 4), and again by Procopius (_De Bell. Goth._, iv, 3, 4), from whom we learn that they dwelt on the shores of the Lake Mæotis and to the North of the Caucasus, whence they overran the country of the Medes and of Armenia, until defeated by Artaces who forced them to withdraw beyond the Cyrus; similar predatory incursions into Tauric-Scythia and the West, being arrested by the Goths, who in their turn were overpowered by the Huns. The invasion of Asia Minor by the Alans gave cause of uneasiness to the Roman Empire, but it was successfully resisted by Arrian, prefect of Cappadocia (Forbiger, _Handbuch der Alt. Geogr._, i, 424), and they were also defeated by Vakhtang “Gourgasal”—Wolf Lion—the sovereign of Georgia, 466–499, upon their venturing to invade that kingdom (Brosset, _Hist. de la Géorgie_, I, 153). In 966, the Yasses were subdued by the Russians under Sviatoslaff, after his conquest of Tmoutorakan (Taman); and in 1276 they lost Dediakoff, their capital, to the Mongols, whose progress, having the Kiptchaks for their allies, they attempted to oppose (Karamsin, _Hist. de Russie_, i, 214; ii, 191). After this we find the Yasses in the West, for when Tchaga, the son of Nogaï, led an expedition sent by the Khan Toula Boga, 1287–1291, to the Danube, he halted for a while in the country of the Ass, now Moldavia, the capital of which bears their name to this day—Yassy (D’Ohsson, _Hist. des Mongols_, iv, note p. 750). After the death of Nogaï, 1299, at Kaganlik (now Kouïalnyk near Odessa), some 16,000 Ass or Alains, more than one half of which number were fighting men, crossed the river, 1301, and offered their services to the Byzantine Emperor by whom they were accepted (Pachymeres, _Migne edition_, tom. 144, p. 337).