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One evening, the Lesghian Babaï, who was seated on the stone steps at the doors of the barracks among a crowd of other convicts, took it into his head to have a wrestling bout with Vaska, whose horns were pretty long.

Thus, while the Abkhasian of group 1 is still at the agglutinating, the Lesghian of group 2 has fairly reached the inflecting stage, and the Georgian seems still to waver between the two.

The Lesghian tribes "betray an accentuated brachycephaly, equal to that of the pure Mongols about the Caspians."

But, apart from Georgia, historical interest in Caucasia centres in the long and persistent attempts which the Russians made to conquer it, and the heroic, though unavailing, resistance offered by the mountain races, more especially the Circassian and Lesghian tribes.

Meanwhile Shamyl had roused the Lesghian tribes farther east and begun his twenty years’ struggle for freedom, a struggle which called forth the sympathy and admiration of nearly the whole of Europe.