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THE MAMISOX PASS AND GEBl 123
byiforested slopes, golden and fragrant through the early summer
with sheets of azalea blossom, by pastures fringed with delicate
birches and low thickets of the creamy Caucasian rhododendron.
Snow-crests look down from all sides over the shoulders of the
lower hills. There are few signs of prosperity in the dark, stone-
built, windowless cottages, crowded closely together about a group
of ruinous towers. But of the peace that the Russian Government
has given to the country in the last half century we may note
a trace in the extension of the use of timber in external arclii-
tecture. So long as hostile flames were to be feared, as at Ushkul
till twenty years ago, all was of stone. Now the gloom of Gebi
is broken by many brown wooden balconies and barns, similar to
those found south of the Alps.
There are man}" yet undiscovered and uncatalogued
'
ex-
'
cursions from the village within the reach of anybody who can
walk, or ride uphill on a native saddle. The beautiful pastur-es
on the way to the Gurdzivsek ofier themselves for a morning's
ramble. For a panorama of the great chain the snow^y dome of
Shoda (11,860 feet), conspicuous in the range south of the village,
can have no rival. Moore in 1868 had been most anxious to
climb it. Weather then was adverse ; and it was not till nine-
teen years later that it was trodden by Devouassoud and myself
It has since been visited and the view photographed by Signor
Sella.
A path crosses the Rion, and then traverses open corn-land
and the scattered rivulets of the water that descends from the
small glacier that hangs high on the brow of Shoda. Leaving
to the right the glen from which this stream emerges, Devouas-
soud and I climbed a zigzag path through a great beech-forest.
Some 2000 feet above the valley we turned a corner, and entered
another glen to the north-east of our peak. From this point
there is a noble view of the snows of the main chain, while
Burdjula I'ises as a bold tower immediately opposite. Farther
east the clustered summits of Adai Khokh come into sight.
Here for the first time I .saw and recognised behind the two
peaks of the Rion Valley
a double -
fanged
crest and a more