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96 THE EXPLORATION OF THE CAUCASUS
dark. The men had supposed us lost, and now, overjoyed to see
us again, talked, kissed, and hugged us all simultaneously. The
excitement among the villagers grew intense. The porters told
them that we had disappeared up the mountain, and that our
tracks were visible to a great height on the southern face ; the
shepherd boy was a witness to our mystericus appearance on the
other side the same evening •
the two facts showed that we must
have crossed the mountain, and we suddenly found ourselves
installed as heroes instead of humbugs in the jJ'-^blic opinion of
Kasbek. Two of the porters after a time took courage to allege
that they had followed in our footsteps to the top, but this bold
fiction was not pressed on our acceptance.
In after years M. Muromzoft", a writer whose contributions to
Caucasian travel and literature I have commented on sufficiently
elsewhere,' set up for these two porters — Toto and Zogel, he says
their names are— a serious claun to have followed us to the summit.
The account, as he professes to have taken it down from their lips,
is full of contradictions and impossibilities. But I would not attach
too much weight to the defects of his version, if the story were
otherwise credible. But it is not :
no
man in sandals, and without
climbing appliances, could have got vip by our route, and had the
porters attempted it, we must have seen them in our tracks, during
the hours we spent on the ice-wall or on our return to the gap.
May Toto and Zogel long live to enjoy the honour thi'ust on
them by the provincial or national feelings of the good people of
Tiflis, who twenty years later were ready to hail the first Russian
ascent of the peak as its first '
authentic '
ascent !
As usual, our successors have escaped most of the difficulties and
perils that beset pioneers. Some details of subsequent ascents are
given in the Appendix. Recent climbers have altogether avoided
our ice-wall ; they have either climbed the rocks of the eastern face,
or followed the obviously easiest route—the line of our descent.
above the
Nothing is wanted but a hut on the rocks, high
Devdorak Glacier, to make the expedition as practicable
as the
ascent of Mont Blanc.
'
Alpine Journal, vol. xii. p. 320.