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STJANETIA 207
themselves as dark, shadowy cones amidst the fresh green of the
deciduous forest, of beeches and alders, of ash and walnut, of
copses that in June and July are brioht with pur])le rhododendron
and fragrant with golden azalea blossom. The glades are
gay with lupines and lilies and the spires
of a ten-thousand-
blossomed heracleum.' Any comparison from the reality
to an
imitation nuist seem more or less inverted and folse. But for
those who only know the imitation, it may be permissible to
repeat a phrase that comes to every Englishman's lips
as he
wanders through Suanetian woodlands. When the azaleas and
rhododendrons thicken, and the tall flowers cluster among them
round the mown, open spaces, the epithet 'park-like' is inevitable!
One finds one's-self looking unconsciously for the chimneys of the
'
family mansion,' and the board with '
Trespassers,
beware.' The
illusion is abruptly broken when their place is taken by the tower.s
of Ushba.
Mountaineers, as a rule, see Suanetia after midsummer. In
June among the blossoms, and again in October when the beeches,
the wild fruit-trees and the azaleas turn red, and the birches ffolden
against the fresh autumn snows, the brilliancy of the landscape
must be marvellous. Suanetia is a country for travellers and
artists as nnich as for mountain climbers. Space, variety, sunniness
— these are the constant and characteristic
qualities of Suanetian
scenery. The great mountain basin is broken l)y no heights that
approach the snow-line. The glens are divided only by long
grassy or forested ridges. Their gentle undulating crests furnish
the most efiective contrast to the icy clefts and rigid clifls of
Shkara and Ushba. From the beauty of flowers and forests close
at hand, the eye is carx-ied through soft gradations of distance
to the pure glaciers which hang down like silver stau-s from the
snowy chain. The atmosphere has none of that sharpness of
definition we associate with the Alps in sxunmor. It more resembles
' '
M. Levier writes :— Heracleum mantegnzzianum is probably the largest umbelliferous
plant in the Caucasus. Its stalks reach 10 centimetres in thickness, its basal leaves exceed a
metre, and on the smallest of the plants which M. Correvin ha-s raised from seed at Geneva I
have counted ten thousand Ijlossoms.'