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THE DISCOVERERS OF THE CAUCASUS 25
encircle and divide them. The mountains cast of the Mamison Pass are
laid down from the new survey. Mr. Donkin has, bj'
means of numerous
magnetic bearings and photographs, depicted with considerable accuracy the
great Bezingi Glacier. M. dc Dechy has provided me with a mass of
photographs. For the rest, I have had materials of my own, in bearings
and sketches taken from many lofty standpoints. Thirty-six sheets of
topographical notes are embodied in that map.'
This work has been in some points superseded, but it has served
its purpose. The map which I am here able to produce owes no
doubt its general scientific precision almost entirely to the ob-
servations taken during the last ten years by the officers charged to
re-survey the great chain. It would be difficult to speak too highly
of the zeal and industry of several of these cartographers. But it
may be permissible to believe that the sympathy and appreciation
their work has met with on the spot, the suggestions and criticisms
that have been exchanged in mountain camps
between them and
Alpine explorers, have affijrded some help and encouragement to
our Russian friends in their labours. Owing to the delay in the
formal publication of the new survey, wliicli is on the large scale
of one-verst to the inch, these labours have as yet met with but
limited recognition, even m Russia. M. Golovievskv. who was re-
sponsible for the Elbruz sheet, the only one yet officially published,
has, I understand, received honours from the geographers of St.
Petersburg. When the importance in the orography of the
chain of the Central Group, and the difficulties involved in its
accurate survey, are appreciated at a distance, there can be but
little doubt that the work of other officers will be duly noticed in
their own country.
My only serious difference with the surveyors is in the very
knotty question of nomenclature. It is the general experience of
travellers that the names given on the new maps are in many in-
stances not those commonly in use among the people of the country.
In some they are obviously clumsy. Dongus-orun-cheget-kara-bashi,
'—the '
The head of the black ridge of the place of pigs name
apphed to one of the summits visible from Urusbieh— is too much
of a mouthful for every-day use. And in one now famous instance