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1()4 THE EXPLORATION OF THE CAUCASUS
us forest trees clung to every available inch of ground ;
looking
upwards, the character of the defile was more savage. The foaming
waters of the Cherek, crossed three times by bridges, filled the
bottom of the trench, the sides of which were perpendicular walls,
succeeded by shelves capped in their turn by a loftier tier of preci-
pices. The path, a mere ladder of broken stones, brought us by
a, rapid series of zig-zags to a
UlE l.uUl.li III- THE CULKl.k
most extraordinary spot, where
the overhanging cliffs meet and
form a natural bridge over the
river, which can barely be seen
at the bottom of its deep bed.
Seen from this point, the toi'-
rent to all appearance plunged
directly into the heart of the
mountains, and it was impossible
to discover how it found a way
out. The savage grandeur of
the scenery here attained its
height, and so far as my own
and my companions' experience
goes, there is no gorge in the
Central Caucasus of equal gran-
deur.
Henceforth the cleverly con-
trived rock-staircase which con-
nects Balkar with the outside
world finds room—now on one
side, now on the other— to creep along the base of the cliffs at the
river's edge ; until at last, just when the careless observer would
think it was hopelessly defeated,
it crawls across the face of an
overhanging bluflF by a gallery, partly cut into the rock, partly built
out from it. We next wound over barren and disintegrated slopes,
broken occasionally by stone-capped earth-pillars, similar to those
we had seen before on the Ardon, in the Caucasus, and to the
well-known examples in the Val d'Herens in Switzerland.