But

in Russian, and therefore sealed books to most readers. even in the languages of Western Europe there is no lack of volumes. France and Germany have of late years been characteristically represented, on the one side by the light Lettres 'sur le Caucase' and the farcical, but often graphic, sketches of Alexandre Dumas; on the other by the encyclopædic volumes of Herr Petzholdt, and the interesting, but for the public somewhat too botanical, chapters of Herr Radde. Those who care to go to older books may find in Dubois de Montpereux, Wagner, and Klaproth a mass of valuable information, and may pick out some curious facts from the ponderous volumes which record the embassies to Persia of the Middle Ages.

Even in our own literature much general information can be obtained. A few English travellers were attracted to the Caucasus before the Russian war by interest in the political struggle of which it was the scene, and some of them have left us curious, if imperfect, sketches of their wanderings. Since the restoration of peace and the thorough subjugation of the tribes, visitors have been more frequent, and, being looked on by the Russians no longer as spies in a doubtful contest but as witnesses to a complete victory, far better received. We have had consequently in the last twenty years a fair supply of volumes describing tours along the main lines of traffic through Transcaucasia and Daghestan, and one or two treating of travels in the interior of the country and among the fastnesses of the mountain-chain.

After an interval of nearly six years, the last twelve months have been marked by the addition to the Caucasian catalogue of three books, each of which contains a great deal more than a fresh description of the 'regular round. For the Caucasus, like Switzerland, has already its regular round. The obedient and uninventive tourist, safely landed at Poti, proceeds, with the sanction of his Murray' and the full approval of his Russian hosts, through Kutais, and by Ani to Erivan. Having duly gazed from a distance at the sacred mountain of Armenia, he returns to Tiflis, and, after crossing the Dariel, is forwarded from Vladikafkaz along the high-roads of Daghestan to some port on the Caspian, whence he may quickly find his way back to Moscow. In towns such a tour may be fairly satisfactory though it leaves out two of the most striking, the semi-Persian Schuscha and Elizavetpol. But as regards natural scenery it is fatally meagre, and those who adhere to it may be expected to return with impressions of the Caucasus similar to those formed of the Alps before men began to search for their beauties.

It is only by a rare exception* that a frequented highway leads through that part of a mountain-chain where the peaks rise to their full grandeur and the valleys are most luxuriant. Zermatt, Chamonix, Courmayeur, Grindelwald, all lie off the old tracks of commerce. The Stelvio road owes its existence to military necessity; a dull and easy mule-pass lies close beside it. In finding little beauty in the scenery of the Mont Cenis, the Brenner, or the Julier, our ancestors are not without sympathizers even among the most enthusiastic modern mountain-worshippers.

Mr. Grove, Herr von Thielmann, and Captain Telfer are none of them tourists of the baser sort; they have all something fresh to tell us. Moreover, each author has distinctive merits of his own. Mr. Grove went to the Caucasus primarily to climb and explore mountains, but he does not fall into the faults generally attributed to Alpine literature. He has the power, while avoiding needless details and tedious repetitions, of seizing on characteristic incidents, and he writes with an ease, spirit, and humour rare among travellers. Herr von Thielmann is a rising German diplomatist, and some of his chapters assume somewhat the form of an official report. But, as a whole, the valuable information contained in his book is brought together and arranged in a very readable form. Captain Telfer, an officer in our own navy, has seen and read much, and notes down the facts he has gathered either on the spot or from books with a brevity thoroughly professional.

We shall now proceed to examine in detail the books referred to. Kutais, an ancient town, situated at the point where the Rion, generally identified with the classical Phasis, leaves the hills, was the starting-point of Mr. Grove and his companions for their walking tour. Thence they trod through mud and mist the long track across the Mingrelian highlands to Gebi, the village nearest the western source of the Rion. Of its inhabitants, their manners and customs, he gives us a lively sketch. They are the hucksters of the Caucasus, and in almost every valley during the subsequent tour a man of Gebi travelling on business was met with. It is possible that an infusion of Jewish blood may have had its influence on their mode of life. An old traveller asserts that there are many Jews living about the Upper Rion. Lachamuli, on the Ingur,

The Mamisson Pass, leading from the source of the Rion to a station (Ardonsk) thirty versts west of Vladikafkaz, will, whenever the Russians are at the pains to metal the track cut many years ago, form such an exception.

VOL. CXLV. NO. CCXCVII.

E

is said by Herr Radde to be exclusively Jewish. Captain Telfer describes a Jewish village on the road to the Latpar Pass, the natives of which monopolise the commerce of Svanety. The presence of Jews in this part of the world has been ingeniously accounted for by a late secretary of the French Geographical Society, who has satisfied himself that some of the Babylonish captives were transported to this remote corner of the empire of their conquerors.

The situation of their home has also, doubtless, had something to do with the wandering habits of the men of Gebi. The village is connected by horse-passes with three of the chief valleys north of the main chain-those of the Ardon, the Uruch, and the Tcherek. Horse-passes we call them, for horses do, or did within the present century, cross all of them. They are not, however, cols' on which modern Swiss animals would venture. We learn on good evidence that the St. Theodule and Col d'Hérens were once frequented horseroutes, but in Central Europe as the climbing powers of man have grown, those of beasts seem to have fallen off. The same change will probably take place in the East, although— as the road-making capacities of the Russian Government are immeasurably inferior to those of a Swiss canton or an Italian commune much less rapidly. Where no good roads exist, and the choice lies between the perils of a morass or a glacier, directness will often turn the balance in favour of the latter. But as soon as a paved or metalled track can be found, the safety and ease it assures are held to more than compensate for any loss of time consequent on following its more circuitous

course.

From Gebi Mr. Grove and his friends crossed the chain by a glacier-pass above the western source of the Rion. While descending towards the Tcherek (not to be confounded with the better-known Terek) they had an encounter which amusingly illustrates Caucasian habits:

'We found two men of Gebi who were about to cross the pass from the north, philosophically reposing each of them with a bundle by his side as big as Christian's burden in the old pictures of the "Pilgrim's "Progress." They had intended to drive across the pass a bullock, which I trust they had come by honestly; but the animal being much fatigued, and not likely to live over the snow, they had promptly killed him and cut him up, and were going to carry as much of him as they could to Gebi; at least such was their story. They offered us a leg for a trifling sum, but not feeling quite sure that the beast had died by steel, we declined.'

Unfortunately the clouds which pursued Mr. Grove during

this part of his journey prevented any addition to our knowledge of the great glaciers and mountain-ridges surrounding the source of the eastern Tcherek, the true centre of the Caucasian chain. A few days were spent at one of the Mohammedan villages composing the group known as Balkar, which lie in a broad, featureless, and singularly unattractive basin, between the granite spurs of Dychtau and the broken cliffs of the outer limestone chain. During this halt Mr. Grove rode down to see the upper end of the gorge of the Tcherek mentioned by Klaproth and later travellers. From its centre he had a glimpse of the wooded country to the north,* the beauty of which excited the utmost admiration in his predecessors of

1868.

The existence of a great belt of northern forest, west as well as cast of the Dariel, had been so seldom alluded to in books on the Caucasus, that seven years ago a writer in a leading German geographical magazine could speak of it as a dis

The real discoverers were the authors of the FiveVerst Map, on which its extent is shown with an accuracy which contrasts singularly with the loose dealings of the same engineers with the principal glaciers and mountain-ridges. The unequal care bestowed on these details is perhaps explained when we remember that the military importance and dangers of a forest zone were deeply impressed on the Russians by some of the incidents of their Caucasian campaigns.

Whether the western Tcherek traverses a gorge similar to that of the eastern stream is a question Mr. Grove does not answer. The easy pass connecting the two valleys was traversed in such bad weather that nothing could be seen of the surrounding country, and the only incident worth noting was the narrow escape of the party from the loss of their invaluable interpreter, who was rescued by the timely intervention of Mr. Grove from the jaws of three gigantic sheep-dogs. We regret to say that, while their masters are advancing in civilisation, these animals, like our lower classes in Western Europe according to Tory writers, seem to be yearly becoming more dangerous.

The next two chapters are to a geographer the newest and most interesting of Mr. Grove's book. At Bezingi, a village on the western Teherek, the Englishmen were entertained by a kind but invisible Princess. This good lady was not exempt from the curiosity of her sex, but Mohammedan

'South' is printed in place of north by an obvious slip in Mr. Grove's book.

etiquette compelled her to indulge it by proxy. A man who puzzled Mr. Grove by continually coming, taking a good stare, and then going away, returning shortly afterwards, having another gaze and again departing, as though a very grubby Englishman shone, like Moses on the Mount, too long to be borne for long,' proved to be the 'special reporter' of the Bezingi harem. The attentions of its hospitable head were repaid before parting by the seemingly inappropriate present of an eight-bladed knife. We are surprised to find no mention here or elsewhere, among the various delicacies offered to the travellers by their hosts, of the intoxicating honey frequently alluded to by earlier writers.* Mr. Grove makes

a point of the fact that the diet of the Caucasians contains neither sugar nor alcohol. Have the tipsy bees been banished, along with their disorderly Tcherkess or Abkhasian owners, by a sternly moral government? Ascending from the village through a savage glen encumbered with ancient moraines, the travellers found themselves on a vast ice-stream formed by the union of two branches descending respectively from the great Kotchan Tau (17,096 feet) and the gap west of Tau Tetnuld. As they mounted it they came full in face of Kotchan Tau, the next in height to Elbruz of Caucasian peaks:

The mist which had clothed the upper part of the mighty mountain cleared away and it was revealed to us in all its grace and nobleness of form. Tier after tier of steepest escarped crags rose on its side, and above them was a fan-like ridge so thin seemingly that its huge rock articulations looked to me from below like the delicate fibres and veins in a leaf. Above them was the crest of the mountain, a sharp arête marked by a series of gentle curves of great length covered with a new garment of fresh snow. Kotchan Tau shown with dazzling brightness under the eastern sun, and I think the eye of man could hardly rest on a more noble and beautiful mountain than it looked on that summer morning.'

A speedy relapse in the weather prevented the party from ascending Tau Tetnuld, the mighty snow-cone which looks down on Svanety, or crossing, according to their plan, into that delightful, if dangerous, region. But they were able to clear up several disputed points of topography, and to supply important corrections for the Russian map, which is in this, in

See Klaproth, Spencer, and the Travels of Josafa Barbaro,' in the Hakluyt Society's Publications, 'I was divers times with their lorde whose lief was bent to be in contynuall dronkenes with drinkeng of wyne made of honey.'