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246 THE EXPLOKATION OF THE CAUCASUS
these are almost indispensable to travellers who do not bake for
themselves.
On the first day of our stay in 1887 the weather was unsettled,
and ]\L de D^chy was occupied with his photographic apparatus
and other details. Accordingly, I started without him for an
exploration of Ushba, taking with me two of my Chamoniards.
We were off at 5 A.M. An hour's walk across meadows and
corn-land up the open valley brought us to Mazeri, a picturesque
village overshadowed by a castle of the Dadish Kilians. Here
the Gul glen, which leads straight up to the small glacier
that
lies under the eastern clifi's of Ushba,
falls into the Betsho
valley. At the angle we attempted a short cut, with the result
usual in Suanetia : we imbedded ourselves in an impenetrable
tangle of hazels and azaleas. After this experience we humbly
asked our way at the next farmhouse to the lednik, which
is Russian for glacier. To our surprise we were understood,
and directed to a beaten horse-track, improved for the benefit
of the Russian ofiicers, who send up occasionally
in summer for a
load of ice.
The path mounted steadily through a fir forest, and then
traversed flowery pastures. The white clouds played in and out
between the two great peaks ; towards noon they lifted. By that
time we were level with the middle region of the glacier, and it
became necessary to consider how far our reconnaissance should
be pushed. Since the sky seemed to promise a few fine hours I
set my heart on gaining the top of the crag opposite Ushba, which
forms the south-east extremity of the semicircle of rocks that
encircle the head of the Gul Glacier. In such neighbourhood it
showed only as the footstool of Ushba; yet a summit of over
12,000 feet,^ the height of the Wetterhorn, may be called a
mountain even in the Caucasus.
The glacier pours down in a short ice-fall— easily turned by
the rocks on its left bank—from a recess between the base of the
two great towers and our summit— Gulba, I propose to call it.
'Mr. Donkin, from observations while climbing on Ushbii, estimated the height of Gulba
as 12,500 feet. The Gulba of the one-verst is map a much lower summit.