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CAUCASIAN HISTORY AND TKAVEL 73
ffrirn debatable ground of rock and rubbish Avliich Mr. Ruskin
imagines to be an interposition of Providence, but which sometimes
seems the reverse to the weary mountameer. In the Caucasus
there are few of these dull barrennesses :
the
hillsides are clothed,
not by monotonous pine-woods, but in a rich medley of European
forest-trees ; they are brightened by an undergrowth of laburnums.
azaleas, laurels, and rhododendrons, and broken Ijy glades full of
flowex's that grow six feet high. The traveller who rides in fair
weather over the Latpari Pass, and then crosses the grassy spurs of
Tetnuld to Mujal and Betsho, will confess that the Alps must
yield, that neither the Oberland nor Monte Rosa can show such a
combination of sylvan scenery and sunlit snows. No doubt the
scale of the scenery makes it difficult to treat in art. But we
must not allow our friends the painters to set up a technical and
egotistical standard. We admire in Nature not what is more or less