Untitled

14-t THE EXPLORATION OF THE CAUCASUS
the gaps leading from it to the Karagom as steep, but not in-
accessible. Its relation to the Songuta Glaciers has not yet
been ascertained.
Meanwhile those very energetic and competent officials, the
surveyors and engravers of the Tiflis Topographical Bureau, had
not been idle. They pushed up their new^ survey into the basin
of the Zea and all alono- the northern arlaciers of the chain,
venturing as far as the ice-fall of the Karagom ; they measured
numerous peaks; finally in 1891 M. Kovtoradze, the head of the
local survey party, paid a visit to Mr. Holder's stone-man on the
summit of Adai Khokh. In the sheets he has pi-epared the local
names have been revised and added to. In this important matter
of nomenclature, the surveyor differs everywhere, I think, from
Dr. Radde, while Signor Sella in most places differs from both.
In fact each village, sometimes each individual, has a separate
nomenclature, and it is always a question which shall be adopted.
Add to this that to no two Europeans does the same uncertain
sound, a Georgian sneeze, or a Tui'kish grunt, suggest a similar
representation in a Western alphabet, and the consequent con-
fusion is obvious. When, as sometimes happens, a Caucasian
traveller of one yeai''s standing tells me that my nomenclature is
quite wrong, I am always ready humbly to admit the justice
of his
criticism, subject to my own liberty to say the same of that which he
desires to substitute. For, in point of fact, I am embarrassed in too
many instances by the possession,
names :
not of one but of several sets of
one for each time I have been in the countiy, and one for
each separate native or each official map I have consulted. Conse-
quently, as regards accuracy in Caucasian place-names,
I am some-
what both of a sceptic and an opportunist. Until the survey is issued
in a definitive form discussion may in certain cases be profitable.
But
as a genei'al rule the final decision of the Government officials, right
or wrong, must, I hold, as a matter of convenience, be allowed to
prevail.
I have yielded in the matter of Dykhtau and Koshtantau,
although by transposing these names the surveyors have inflicted
on Western map-makers and geographers an inconvenience almost
as great as that which historians suffer when a British states-