Untitled

244 THE EXPLORATION OF THE CAUCASUS
people will bury their dead anywhere.^ M. Levier was in 1890
present, at Pari, at the exhumation by the Russian officials of the
corpse of a victim killed in some private
feud. It had been laid a
foot or two under the common path. The Suanetians, it appears,
have this much reverence ; they object strongly
to the face-cloth
being raised, and it would be as much as an official's life is
worth to do so.
Latal is a very large group of village.'*, the lowest in Independent
Suanetia. Its hamlets stand on knolls, many of them obviously
ancient moraines, above the junction of the Ingur and the Mulkhura.
The vegetation shows traces of a warmer climate, and walnuts
abound. The homesteads are less crowded, and stand apart in the
fields. There are two or three churches or chapels, and the apse
of one is decorated externally with an arcade. They
are all
kept locked up, and on none of my visits have I succeeded in
getting access to them. The women are more prominent here
than in the upper villages, and occupy their full share of the
ring that surrounds the traveller Avho halts for lunch under the
shade of the great village sycamore. On one of my visits the
common fountain, a long wooden trough, was in use as a bath
by a lady of the locality, who seemed but little embarrassed
at the appearance of strangers.
Beyond the familiar little pass that leads to Betsho we found
the new capital of Suanetia. Betsho is as much an official
and artificial creation as St. Petersburg itself. But very little
to its erection. An
money and not too much energy has gone
unfriendly critic might
describe it as two wooden sheds and a
bungalow. In the modest bungalow lives the Priestav, or Com-
missioner, as he may be called, who rules Suanetia. The shed
opposite his house, once a baiTack, is now a ruin, and untenanted
save by a casual Mingrelian, who has established himself, with
his poultry and a few barrels of wine, in a floorless, half-roofed
corner of it. The upper shed, a long, low building built across the
valley, contains the quarter's of the j^olice staff, and a Cancellaria
'
Levier, A travers le Caucaee. 1894.