Untitled

KASBEK AM) TIIK OSSETP: DISTRICT .
satisfy no one but an enthusiast. Objects
87
of" a similar character are
everywhere associated with primitive worship of the reproductive
powers of nature, and are found in many other places in the
Northern Caucasus.
The situation of the post-station has no beauty except wlien
the great mountain is luiveiled. Then the picture seen from the
windows will not easUy be foi'gotten. Again and again it has been
painted and photographed : it is met with in every book of travel,
even in the shop -windows of St. Petersburg. It is the keepsake
view— the Jungfrau from Interlaken— of the Caucasus. Not that
it has any likeness in detail to the Swiss landscape, or any of its
charm of foreground. Austere and wild, the naked hillsides, wdien
not relieved by atmospheric effects, appear ugly. But tliere is
unique grandeur in the steep curves of the vast white dome, which
fills all the sudden opening in the opposite range. Kasbek is a
solitary classical mountain, not a Gothic pinnacled ridge. When
the storm-wTack suddenly swirls apart and leaves the peak clear
against the upper blue ;
when it stands up at sundown, high above
the vapours that fill the hollows about its base, cold and pure
against a lemon sky, the passing traveller does not wonder at its
fame. He may even enter for a moment into the spirit
of genial
amusement with which the Ilussian officials in 18G8 looked on the
modest equipment of the first party of young Englishmen who
proposed to climb where colonels and even companies of Cossacks
had fnuud themselves helpless, and the equally frank and polite
incredulity with which our hosts received, as a matter of course,
our assertion that we had succeeded at the first attempt.'
Before the Russians came to it, the great mountain had hall-
a-dozen native titles. Mkuinvari, the '
recognised Georgian name : it was also known as the '
Ice Mountain,' was the
White Moun-
tain,' or 'Christ's Mountain.' All these titles are now superseded
' In the case of this, the first climb of any difficulty accoiuplished in the Caucasus, and
the first complete ascent of one of its great peaks, I venture to repeat the account I gave at
the time. I do so with the less hesitation, because the narrative was revised and in part written
by my companion, the late A. W. Moore, and in some of the sentences I seem to catch an echo
of his forcible way of putting things, of that conibiiiation of literal accuracy and efi'ective
emphasis which was characteristic of the man.