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THE PATHS TO SUANETIA 189
right bank of the Skenis SkaU in a hioad cultivated valley. The
landscape is bright and full of local colour, particularly
on a feast-
day, when the Mingrelian gentry, the peasants and their wives, ride
across the hills from the distant \illages, and the green in front of
the diikhan is enlivened with the martial figures of the men and
the red skirts and bright handkerchiefs of the women.
For a long day's ride the traveller follows up the stream of
the Skenis Skali into the mountains. Half a mile behind Zao-eri
the entrance to the gorge is guarded by a ruined castle. The
scenery may remind the Alpine wanderer of a Bergamasque valley.
High-arched bridges and chestnut-embowered villages are wanting ;
but the variety of the timber, the richness of the undergrowth, the
scale and colouring of the slopes, make up for any lack of ])ieturesque
incident.
The mid-day halt is made at Lentekhi. This hamlet is in an
important and very beautiful situation, at the junction of three
valleys, all of which lead to passes
to Suanetia. The most eastern
is the main valley of the Skenis Skali, which is the way to the
Latpari Pass. The central glen, that of the Lashkadura torrent,
leads to another pa.ss, a more direct way for pedestrians to Latal—
when you know it. Dent's party in 1888 did not know it, or find
it, and wandered rather vaguely over the heights and hollows.
Through the third glen mounts a horse-track which circles round
the western flank of the Laila Glaciers, crosses a high pasture where
the Dadish Kilian Princes have a house and keep their horses in
summer, and de.scends below Betsho. From the horse-pasture
another very rough track leads over the hills to Sugdidi. A
short cut across the glaciers, by whicli a hunter can, it is said,
reach Lentekhi in one day from the highest hut on the Suanetian
side, also descends— if I mistake not— into this valley.
We have bidden farewell to wheels. The region of dukhans,
or wine-shops, has also been left behind. In the villages henceforth
the only accommodation met with will be an occasional Cancellaria—
that is to say, a small building, containing as a rule no furniture
whatever, unless a raised jjlatform can be called furniture. But
the interior will generally be found clean, and in stormy weather