Untitled

36 THE EXPLOKATION OF THE CAUCASUS
spreads the Scythian Steppe ; not the dead level of Lonibardy,
but an expanse of long low undulations, which would be reckoned
hills in our Home Counties, seamed by long shining
ribbons which
mark the courses of the tributaries of the Terek. On the horizon rise
boldly — resembhng in scale and outline the Euganean Hills— the
Five Mountains of Piatigorsk. Farther east, the basin of Vladi-
kavkaz is enclosed by a semicircle of low sandstone hills. They
deserve closer inspection, for they might be found to be rich in
traces of ancient glacial action.
Now let us turn our faces southwards. Here, too, immediately
under the snows, we find '
crystalline schists,' smooth grassy heights
separated by shallow trenches, which form the lesser undulations
of the three basins, the '
Drei Langenhochthaler Imeritiens '
Radde. These basins, or '
of Dr.
longitudinal folds,' are enclosed on the
south by the long high ridge of dark slates, Avhich extends parallel
to the crystalline chain from the neighbourhood of Sukhuni Kale
to the Krestovaya Gora. Behind this slate crest spreads a confused
multitude of hills, Jurassic and cretaceous in their formation, the
geological features of which are outlined in the accompanying map.
Their outer edge, distant some thirty to forty miles from the snows,
is marked bv a limestone belt, lower and less continuous than that
on the north, which frames the gorges of the Rion and rises
in the Kuamli (6352 feet) and Nakarala (4774 feet), near Kutais,
to its best-known elevations. At the foot of the latter lie the
coal-mines of Khibuli, i-ecently connected with Kutais by a railway.
Over its high uplands spreads one of the noblest beech-forests in
the world, varied by a natural undergrowth of azaleas, laurels,
box, and rhododendrons. Further west, on either side of the
gorge of the Ingur, this ridge rises to a loftier elevation, and
carries small glaciers, on heights designated on the five-verst map
as Khodjall (990G feet) and Larakhanis-chabi.
What ideas or suggestions may we derive from such a landscape ?
To me, great panoramas— Caucasian or Alpine — confirm the modern
belief that the agency that first created mountain ranges was
crumpling by pressure. That the original irregularity of sui-face
so produced took the form of one enormous smooth-sided bank or