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72 THE EXPLORATION OF THE CAUCASUS
of the two ranges by saying that, as a whole, the kuidscapes of
the Caucasus are less picturesque,
but more romantic. The
scenery appeals more to the Imagination ; even when ugly it is
rarely commonplace. It is as Shelley's poetry to Scott's. The
scale is larger ; mankind is less conspicuous. The view of the
great range from the railway, half-way between the Caucasian
Baths and Vladikavkaz, dwarfs that of the Alps from the Lombard
plain. The rare incidents of the foreground — the grassy barrow
of some forgotten Scythian prince, the turbaned headstone of
some Tartar chieftain, or the low white cottages, glittering
church-spire, and sunflower fields of one of the Cossack villages
that line the old military march, will not indeed compensate some
cultivated travellers for the absence of frequent villas and campaniles.
Many Frenchmen— even Frenchmen of genius — have found
the Roman Campagna insupportable. And the old-fashioned and
highly respectable sentiment that whatever is waste is horrid (which
made Cobbett disparage the heather on Hind Head) is more common
among our contemporaries than they sometimes care to avow.
Travellers surely need not be ashamed of their preferences, so
long as they are honest. There is scenery, like music, for every
mood and mind. Caucasian scenery, I repeat, belongs to the
romantic school. It produces impressions rather by broad effects
than by crowded details. Compared with the mountains, the forests
and flowers of Suanetia, the alps and pinewoods and chalet-dotted ^
meadows of Grindelwald look stiff and tame; even the great Italian
valleys yield in sublimity. To those who have seen the sky-cleaving
pyramids of Koshtantau and Dykhtau catch the sunset, even the
Finsteraai-horn and Schreckhorn may seem small. Elbruz, if the most
unequal of mountains, has moments of unequalled majesty. Very
seldom in the Alps — I may cite as exceptions Grindelwald and the
head of the Val di Genova— is the beauty of forests brought close
to the splendour of snow and ice. The interval is generally that
' I use the word 'alp' here in its proper first sense, a common pasturage. Chalet is seldom
circumflexed, except by British authors. It designates properlj' not a farmhouse inhabited all
the year round, but a dwelling on the
'
'alp used in summer. The reasons why French writers
avoid the circumflex are, I imagine, that there is no written form chaslet in old French literature,
and that they follow local pronunciation.