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2 THE EXPLORATION OF THE CAUCASUS
Caucasus. There is no region or zone in them which is not adapted
for some human use ; there are few heights which the shepherd
and his flock may not cUmb in search of summer coolness. The
less accessible crags and hollows were, indeed, looked up to for ages
with a certain reverence as places on the borderland of the spii'itual
world, sites whence a god might issue his oracles, where a patriarch
or a prophet might commune with the Infinite, or himself vanish
into the Unseen.
The horror of great mountains and wild scenery among pi-imitive
people and in early ages has been, I think, not a little exaggerated
and the
by writers imbued \\ith the literature of the last century,
artificial taste which it expressed. In most of the religions and
legends of the world mountains have held a large place. Their
importance in Bible story was fully set out for the entertainment
of the curious so long ago as a.d. 160G by Rebmann, a Swiss
pastor, who proved in a volume of rhymed verse, much to his own
satisfaction, his thesis of the important part played by High
Places in the dealings of God with man.^
The Greek, who gazed up from the river-plains and sea-
beaches to the crests of Olympus, Taygetus, or Parnassus, associated
them with the council-chamber of the gods, the home of Pan,
or the haunt of Apollo. Mountains— his own mountains— held
a large place on his horizon and in his mind. He peopled their
groves and streams with airy spirits
of human or semi-human
shape ; throughout his literature he played aflfectionately
wdth these
creatures of his imagination. Ai-istophanes could venture to
embody and bring on the stage the Clouds. But the snowfield
and the glacier had no place in the daily surroundings, and
therefore no place in the common beliefs or fancies of the Hebrew
or the Hellenic race. The snows had no local deities, imless,
indeed, the Lares— the nature-spii'its whose name stiU lingers in
Tuscany and the Trentino in association with remote and uncanny
corners of the mountains— took them under their protection.
Yet the eternal snows, if unfamiliar, were not altogether
' See J. R. Rebmann's Naturae Magnalia. Ein histig poetisch Gesprdr.h von Bergen wnd
Berghuten. Bern, 1606. 2nd edition, 1620.