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194 THE EXPLORATION OF THE CAUCASUS
brow the long spurs of the Laila come into view, fringed with
sunshine and tui'ning their shadowy forests towards us. We see
from time to time the white water of the Ingur flashing far
below in its deep gorge. Zigzagging through azalea copses and
white rhododendron thickets, full of midsummer bloom, the path
passes amongst weathered birch-stems, the branches of which
frame the great pyramid of Tetnuld, spotless white between the
green earth and blue heaven. Opposite us opens
the broad
glen that leads to the glaciers of Janga. Its solitary village,
towers. The Russians
Iprari, is noticeable from the absence of any
razed its battlements to the ground in 187G in retribution for the
murder of two officers. At last the track plunges down steeply
to the courthouse of Kalde, which stands on a little meadow beside
the Ingur, hemmed in by green slopes except where the crests of
Ushba £11 the gap above the river.
Let UB now turn to another of the paths to Suanetia likely to be
used by mountaineers. In treating of Gebi and its inhabitants, I
took occasion to point out that, in olden times, a frequented track
led from the Ption to Suanetia across the comparatively low passes
that separate the southern valleys. In feet, up to the sixteenth
century, the Suanetians held the upper basins of the three great
rivers of Imeretia, the Rion and Skenis Skali, as well as the Ingur.
They lost them through rash indulgence in their primitive practices :
they slew a local noble of some importance, whom Brosset calls
Prince Djaparidze. As a punishment they were closely blockaded
by their neighbours, and after some twenty years of isolation were
reduced in A.D. 1534 to cede to the Georgian sovereign all their
villages and churches, east of Ushkul, with the treasures contained
in them. The document has been preserved, and contains many
village names, e.g. Edena, now extant only in mountain nomen-
clature. The territory deserted by the Suanetians was only partially
occupied. The Skenis Skali sources became a wilderness across
which it is at present an undertaking of some difiiculty to force
a passage with animals. But the novelty of the experience
and the strange sights seen on the way fully make up, at any
rate in recollection, for its toils and inconveniences.