Untitled

nnngling with shadowy
THE MAMISON PASS AND (IK 111 107
clouds that had crossed the Mamison and
hunof about the heio-hts.^
The road, or rather the absence of anything like a European
road, seemed, however, in keeping with the wild and prim.'eval
The homes and works of Man were wanting :
air of the landscape.
Nature reigned supreme. I have already compared the steppe to
the Roman Campagna. But there civilisations have come and gone ;
the sadness of decay and far-off things overtakes the wanderer.
Here he finds the fre.shness of a virgin country, of which mankind
has as yet taken no formal po.ssession, or onl\- such passing posses-
sion as leaves little permanent mark behind.
The second stage ends at Alagir, a large Ossete town, situated
close to the spot where the Ardon leaves the hills. We drove
up the street, a broad lane of mud, on either side of which low
wattled and plastered huts hide behind a luxuriant growth of
sunflowers and ramjaant vegetables. I class the sunflower with
vegetables,
because its seeds are a common article of diet in the
Caucasus. Half or quite naked children play in the dirt ; fur-
capped, long-robed men, armed with
drawn by oxen, through the lanes.
goads, lead
A disused
creaking carts,
fort above the
town stands as a monument of the old border warfare. Near
it is a large house constructed for the oflicials who superintended
the making of the Mamison Eoad. Here we found quarters
among billiai'd-tables, gilt mirrors, and decayed sofas. The
deserted orchard-close at the back of the house would have de-
lighted a pre-Raphaelite painter.
At Alagir a road, in the Eui'opean sense of the word— a metalled
track—
begins.
It immediately enters a limestone defile. Every
northern stream of the Central Caucasus has a similar gate to
pass before it reaches the plain. Here the crags are fringed with
ferns, and clothed in hanging woods of elm, lime, maple,
oak and
alder. This is part of the forest-belt which covers the outskirts
' The Meteoroloi,'ical Records show that the vapours of the Black Sea, intercepted farther
west by the unbroken rampart of the Caucasus, take advantage of the trench of the Ardon
to reach the northern steppe. The rainfall at Alagir exceeds that at Piatigorsk, although,
as a rule, the figures grow less from west to east in the isthmus.