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CAUCASIAN liLsTOKY AND TRAVEL 71
himself nuich loss of time and of the patience which, as Mr. Donkin
once pointed out, is the greatest of all recjuisites
in Caucasian travel.
Hitherto I have dwelt, perhaps too strongly,
on the draw-
backs and difficidties of travel in the Caucasus. What are its
rewards 1 Does the scenery equal or surpass that of the Swiss
Alps ? Such questions are often put, but I can hardly hope to
give any generally acceptable answer to them. According to my
experience, appreciation of scenery
for its own sake is far less
universal nowadays than is generally assumed. Our contemporaries
require social distraction. There are among them comparatively few
who can be content to live with a landscape. Painters do so now
and then, but their interest in nature is partly professional, and apt
to extend only as far as they see their way to reproduce effects.
To the public, sceneiy is welcome as a background for sport, or
adventure, or — society for shooting, for climbing, or for
picnicing.
Our appreciations depend more and more upon accidental circumstances.
Thirty years ago the Alps were full of wanderers who
might properly be called travellers. Now, most of our countrymen
inns and crowded
neglect any spot that is not provided with good
with their acquaintances. At the same time, a cry is raised that
Switzerland is overcrowded, that the Alps are exhausted. It is of
our own choice if we submit to be herded in hotels, or packed still
closer in the outhouses known as Club-huts. The Playground of
Europe has still sufficient quiet
them. The Alps can never be exhausted, except
corners for those who care to find
to tourists of the
baser sort. Their old lovers never revisit them without discovering
some new beauty. But then we are content to do without such
comfort as may be found in tables d'hote, bands, dances, daily
newspapers, and a weekly British Chaplain. Those Avho in their
search for scenery are not independent of these luxuries will do
well to put up with Zermatt or the Engadine, and to avoid the
Caucasus. It is not for them that I attempt here to analyse,
from the point of view of an old frequenter of the Alps, the
peculiar characteristics of the new region it has been my good
fortune to investigate.
I may best convey the broad distinction between the first aspect