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238 THE EXPLORATION OF THE CAUCASUS
by the half-dozen great erratic blocks, ranged in a curve, which
mark the terminal moraine of the last advance, there is a series
of mounds and pools, formed by the damming of streams. Of
lowering in the trough of the valley there is no sign whatever.
Above the meetins: of the ice-streams and on their true left
lies the Belvedere Alp of the Caucasus. After a steep climb I
found myself in a lovely meadow, the nearest to the snows of
an army of green hills, unbroken by copse or wood, except here
and there by a slender birch or a tangle of the cream rhodo-
dendron. The surface was one sea of flowers, pink
and white
daisies, gentians, forget-me-nots, and waving grasses. The spot
was not, however, altogether unknown to man, for, wading ankle-
deep in the thick bright
commanded the best view
carpet, I found on the brow which
of the mountains two stone-men— no
common stone-men, but carefully built pyramids tapered up with
sci'upulous neatness to a point. Could they be the work of
Russian Surveyors 1 HaixUy, for at that time the new map was
only in contemplation in this district, and it would be an insult
to the maker of this portion of the five-verst map to suppose that
if he had really visited the ground he would have misrepresented
it as he has. I would rather believe that some bold hunter raised
these piles as altars to that Spirit of the Summits who— as the
ballad tells— led astray the adventurous Metki.
V/hoever the builder may have been, he showed his taste. The
view from this point is unsurpassable of its kind. The source of the
Ingur lies below ;
the spectator stands on a level with the snow-basin
out of which rise the great rock-walls and buttresses that support
the five peaks of Shkara. They carry snow and ice to an extent
hardly ever seen in the Alps. This richness of frozen hangings is
a joy to the traveller, but a terror to the climber. To the right
stretches the long and formidable crest, reached from this side
by an Alpine party in 1893, and in 1895 from the Dykhsu basin,
which extends to Nuamkuam.
I despair of creating in the minds of those who have not travelled
in Suanetia any true picture of the extraordinary sublimity of the
face of the Caucasian chain that ovei'looks the Ingur sources.