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THE CHARACTERISTICS OF THE CAUCASUS 85
they flow through ? Let us examme it more iu detail, aud first on
the north. Here at the base of the central core of the chain spread
broad, smooth, grassy downs, the pastures of the Turk and the
Ossete. Downs I call them, for the name seems best to suit their
I'oUing outlines, but their ridges attain 9000 to 10,000 feet. They
are composed of friable crystalline schists, and atmospheric action has
long ago destroyed the peaks that may once have crowned them.
Beyond these schists rises a broken wall of limestone, cleft to
the base by gorges, through wliich flow the mountain torrents.
SIIErHEKIi AM) FLUlK, NKAli KARACI.
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and capped by pale precipitous battlements, which face the central
chain at a height of 11.000 to 12,000 feet.^ Beyond, again,
broad furrow, or "
lies a
longitudinal fold,' as geologists caJl it, parallel to
the ridges, and then rises the last elevation, a belt of low calcareous
lulls, on which, here and there among the waves of beech-forest,
purple or blue with distance, a white cliff" retains its local colour,
and shines like a patch of fresh snow. Beyond, once more beyond,
' Those who know Savoy may recognise an arrangement of rocks similar, though
liirger scale, to that found round Mont Blanc, in the granitoid rock of the Aiguilles, the
schistose downs of Megeve, and the limestone cliffs of the Aiguille de Varans and Pointe
Percee overshadowing the ravine of the Arve.
on a