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32 THE EXPLORATION OF THE CAUCASUS
nearly equal height, separated by a gap some 1500 feet in deiith,
and 17,000 feet above the sea-level. Each of these cones preserves
the features of a crater in a horseshoe ridge broken down on one
side, and enclosing a shallow snow-filled basin. Observers from
a distance, including M. Favre, have erroneously conjectured the
deep hollow between the peaks to be a gap
in an immense terminal
crater, a supposition which the ascents by Mi-. Grove and myself
have now finally disposed of ^
Kasbek has a far less regular outline than its great rival, and
the passing traveller who only sees it from the high-road may
be excused for not recognising its volcanic origin. From the
south its outline, if compared with the figures (on p. 123) iu
Judd's Volcanoes, has something of the aspect of a breached cone.
Signor Lerco, a Piedmontese gentleman, who climbed the mountain
in 1887,' has sent me a photograph taken on the top of the buttress
conspicuous from the post-station (about 14,500 feet), which shows
the crags that there pi'otrude to be contorted masses of
A great neve now clothes the northern face of the peak.
lava.^
Were
a hut built on the ridge between the Devdorak and Chach glaciers,
the mountain would be less dangerous than Mont Blanc, and
not more ditficult of ascent. It was by this route that we de-
scended in 1868.
Generalities such as these, first gleaned from maps
and books
and scattered observations, the mountaineer summarises and fixes
in his memory in the vivid moments spent on the mountain tops.
De Saussure and Tyndall have both asserted the value of such
bird's-eye views as a basis for scientific reasoning. I do not
pi'etend
to speak with authority on such high matters. Yet
possibly an observer may not bring down less knowledge from
these Pisgah-heights because he goes up to them without either
a theory to support or a reputation to endanger. Of this much
I am certain, that even to men not '
' Grove's Frosty Caucasus, 1S75.
2 See Schweizer Alpenzeitung, Nos. 17-21. Zurich, 1S88.
physically minded,' panoramas
' M. E. Favre has reported as follows on a piece of rock brought from the top and submitted
to him by my guide, Fran(;ois Devouassoud :
containing white crystals of oligoclase.'
'
It is a grey rock of a semi-vitrified substance,