72 Orientalism and Empirein dances and festivals in mountain villages: “I was unable to sleep;
Ilay in a half-conscious state, my ideas gathering in a chaotic way ...
I will never forget that night!”^85 Zisserman recalled a trip on horse-
back along the Aragva River with a group of Pshav: “A gorgeous ra-
vine: woods and mountains, small villages here and there. A turn to
the right, and our road went along the shore; still for 10 versts it was
tolerable, but further on – you hold the reins of your horse, close your
eyes, and make a prayer ... Ukh! What a deafening roar! The waves
crash in ... your head spins ... the waves crash against the shore, the
horse exerts all its strength and you make it to dry land ... Such, or al-
most such, is how we moved on to the Pshav village of Shuapkho.”^86
The yearly migration of the Tushin from the Alazan lowlands to the
mountains in May and June, Zisserman informed readers of Kavkaz,
was, “in a word, a remarkably diverse mixture, a picture worthy of
the brush of Rembrandt!”^87 The young Zisserman found his audience
among the rapidly growing borderland educated community in
Tbilisi.
That audience was also interested in a different form of representa-
tion, one that more closely served its new sense of imperial purpose.
Ethnographers quickly rethought the very Romantic tradition that
had initially inspired them.^88 Romantic writers traditionally empha-
sized human insignificance before the natural beauty and power of
the extended Caucasus mountain range. In the first issue of the
Caucasus Department Zapiski, by contrast, G.V. Sollogub suggested
that the deep ravines of those “colossal phenomena” might instead
offer insight into the fragmentation of the Adygei tribes.^89 “On the
peaks of the Caucasus are hidden the solutions to many important
historical questions about the fate of many disappearing peoples,” he
wrote.^90 The editors of the first issue of Kavkaz announced that read-
ers of Russian in the Caucasus needed to be acquainted with the curi-
ous lands beyond Tbilisi, “still in a young state and little known.”^91
Of particular interest to the literate community in the Caucasus were
ethnographic reports or, as the editors of Kavkaz wrote a week later,
“descriptions of the ways and habits of the Caucasus peoples [nar-
ody].”^92 By 1851 Zisserman could fulfill this mandate as well, and he
described the customs of religion, courtship and marriage, feuding,
singing, and socializing that were unique, he emphasized, to the
Khevsur.^93 Initially captivated by the elaborate costumes, dances,
songs, and cultural practices of the people whose affairs he managed
and “about whom in Russia barely anyone has heard,” he was com-
pelled to ethnographic study, as he recalled later in his memoirs, in
order “to acquaint the reading portion of society with them when the
opportunity presented itself.”^94 The agenda of the newspaper Kavkaz