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84 THE EXTLUKATIOX OF THE CAUCASUS
undivided plain, Ossete horsemen, draped in their hourhas, canter
between the distant farms, until at last a tiny puff of smoke on the
line told them that our guard had not tapped the telegraph wires
in vain, and that we might still sup and sleep at Vladikavkaz.
Vladikavkaz, thoucjh within a morninsf's drive of the base of
Kasbek— as near as Interlaken is to the Jungfrau — is only 2300 feet
above the sea-level. For those to whom Russian towns are already
faraihar, the place will offer little worthy of notice. It has grown
immensely within my recollection, and the population has increased
between 1865 and 1895 from 3650 to 44,000. But the place has
still the usual Russian features, an air of space being no object and
ground-rents inappreciable, a general mixture of pi-etentiousness and
untidiness. The Station Road is full of holes big enough to swallow
a perambulator ; the principal street has a stunted grove in the
middle, and is called a Boulevard. The residential quarter consists
of white-washed, one-storied houses, which stand back modestly
among gardens, as if they felt out of place so near the large
hospitals, barracks, stores and offices. The only local colour is to
be found among the crowd in the streets, and in the bazaar or
market, where Ossete fur-caps, daggers, arms, and red water-melons
are the principal objects exposed. For the traveller there is an
hotel, not inferior to those found in minor French provincial towns,
with an excellent restaurant. Mountaineers are no longer the
strange phenomena they were in 1868, when a waiter to whom
I presented a silver medal of our Queen — in the shape of a sixpence
— said he should preserve it always as a memorial of the Enghshmen
who had come to the Caucasus only to climb mountains. His
point of view was Asiatic, and identical with that of the Japanese
diplomatist who recently informed the Alpine Club that his nation
were a 'serious people, who did not go up mountains without a
religious object.'
In these volumes my business is with the exploration
of the
heights and byways, not with the comparatively well-known postroads
of the Caucasus. I shall not add to the already numerous
descriptions of the great road to Tiflis. Is it not already included
in the pages of Bradshaw ?