Untitled

im THE FA'PLORATION OF THR CAUCASTTS
'
' How many horses have ? you
I asked of one fur-bonneted, keen-
eyed native.
'
Sto,' a hundred, was the reply.
When the crest is reached, tlie track, well-marked as yet, turns
along it towai'ds the main chain. From this uplifted terrace,
8000 feet above the sea-level, there
NATIVE TKAVELLEBS
Fytnargyn. Beyond
is a noble view back over the lovely
curved hills and hollows of the Rion
basin and the snows that encircle
it. On the left, the crests of Laboda
and Ziteli, the Stir-Digor mountains,
send down a glacier to feed the first
tributary of the Rion. Burdjula, the
peaks of Adai Khokh, Shoda, are all
conspicuous. But north and westward
the view, if less lovely in com-
position and in detail,
is attractive
by what it half reveals and suggests.
Above the level wall, over which run
the snow-passes to Karaid, rise the
icy combs of Koshtantau, Dykhtau,
and Shkara, Dykhtau almost concealed
by the intervening mass of
Shkara the twin towers of Ushba invite us to
Suanetia.
At this point it may be well to insist on a lesson the Alpine
traveller has to learn, generally at his own cost, in the Caucasus.
Where there are no made paths the tracks run along the ridges,
and not in the hollows. In our own country the old ridgeways
had a like origin ; they avoided swamps
and hidden enemies. But
this is only half the lesson. When there is no ridge handy, or it
is needful to traverse a forested valley, the torrent bed is apt
to be the only serviceable path. The route from the top of the
first pass to the Suanetian settlement in the Zena Valley is a com-
bination of ridges and torrent-beds. If heavy rains have fallen and
the torrents ai-e full, it may easily become altogether impracticable.
On my first passage we tried a short cut in the descent to the Skenis