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THE VALLEY UF THE URrivH 155
Two stronsx mineral springs are passed. The tirst is near the
pass, the second bursts forth in a pleasant pastoral basin— an old
lake-bed, overhung by the skirts of the Fytnargyn
Glacier. The
stream from it breaks out at present from the flanks of the ice ; its
old channel is deeply carved in the rocks at a lower point. A final
descent leads into the wide bowl of pasture, hemmed in on all sides
by high ridges, a less arid La Berarde, in which the torrent from
the Dykhsu Glacier joins the Cherek. This is Karaul, the centre
of a new district.
There are two other routes from Vladikavkaz to the Urukh
country, and a \K\t\\ thence to Balkar, which is often preferred
by native travellers in early
summer before the Shtuluvsek
is free from snow. From Ardonsk, or Urukhski, on the Cis-
caucasian Kailway, horse-tracks lead up tlie gorge of the Urukh,
or across the hills and forests that separate it from the plain of
Vladikavkaz, to the lower villages. M. de Dechy has taken the
former; I, in 18G8, followed the latter track. The beauty of the
forest scenery, the picturesque detail of crag and water, of hanging
woods and ferny dells, delighted the Hungai'ian traveller. (_)n the
hill-track I found a succession of the noblest landscapes. As far
as a village called Tuganova the way lies across the bare steppe.
At this point a track begins to climb along the ridges
of a range
of foot-hills. After entering the forest zone, it loses itself for hours
in dense beechwood or under thickets of the purple rhododendron,
brightened by frequent copses of golden and fragrant
azaleas. On
the occasional grassy brows, fringed with walnuts and wild fruittrees,
parties of peasants, in white wideawakes, may be found
mowing. Then the track, striking more deeply into the prima3val
forest, leads the traveller to a sudden corner, whence he overlooks
the deep wooded gorge of the Urukh. Old Tartar headstones,
tall monoliths, capped by a stone-wrought tui'ban, and decorated
on the face with rude carvings or mouldering inscriptions, stand
beside the path. Hamlets hang like swallows' nests on the lime-
stone cliffs that rise 5000 feet above the river. To the north
spreads a wide tract of forest, wave upon wave, where the only
signs of man are the hay-cutters' fires, which rise in some distant