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Before the gate a wide square spread out; behind it the bazaar was seething with people, the day being Sunday. Barefooted Ossete boys, carrying wallets of honeycomb on their shoulders, were hovering around me. I cursed them; I had other things to think of I was beginning to share the worthy staff-captain's uneasiness.
This opinion, however, appears to us mere conjecture, as in the time of Klaproth the interpretation of cuneiform inscriptions had not been accomplished, and too little was known of the language of the Medes for any one to judge of its resemblance to the Ossete idiom.
As I entered the Koishaur Valley the sun was disappearing behind the snow-clad ridge of the mountains. In order to accomplish the ascent of Mount Koishaur by nightfall, my driver, an Ossete, urged on the horses indefatigably, singing zealously the while at the top of his voice. What a glorious place that valley is!
"No, sir," the Ossete answered; "but there are a great many threatening to fall a great many." Owing to the lack of a travellers' room in the Station, we were assigned a night's lodging in a smoky hut. I invited my fellow-traveller to drink a tumbler of tea with me, as I had brought my cast-iron teapot my only solace during my travels in the Caucasus.
One of our drivers was a Russian peasant from Yaroslavl, the other, an Ossete. The latter took out the leaders in good time and led the shaft-horse by the reins, using every possible precaution but our heedless compatriot did not even climb down from his box!
We will content ourselves with adding to these remarks of Klaproth on the Ossete language, that its pronunciation resembles that of the Low-German and Slavonic dialects. The Georgians differ essentially from the neighbouring nations, alike in their language and in their physical and moral qualities.
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