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told lightly, and he gets over the ground rapidly, pointing out the objects of interest on the way without wearying us with pointless personal details. Into his practical remarks he sometimes infuses a touch of humour, as the following extract shows:-In out-of-the-way parts of the East the traveller does well to furnish himself with a few mysterious flasks and 'pills-if possible gilded over-of a mild and harmless cha6 racter, to be administered as remedies against every form of 'disease to the crowd which seeks for healing. No harm can ⚫ be done, and the learned traveller will invest himself with a marvellous halo of sanctity.'

Written without political bias, the descriptions of Russian rule are fair and instructive. A traveller who has sometimes feared that the tortures of a telega may have rendered him unduly hard on a large class will find a gloomy satisfaction in noting that both Herr von Thielmann and Captain Telfer add their testimony to the frequent occurrence of drunkenness, lying, and insolence amongst postal officials. The discreditable condition of the service is, however, only one of the minor results of the system of corruption and jobbery which extends, unfortunately, through a large portion of the official world in Russia. The sum, 4,000,000l., the Dariel road cost the Government tells its own story and explains the extreme slowness with which communications, not immediately needed for military purposes, have been opened up. There seems, we fear, little prospect of the speedy development of a better morality in the members of the Imperial service while an incident such as the following can occur at the seat of government itself. Tiflis has been, it seems, deprived of its usual luxury of an Italian opera for two winters. for two winters. The directors, who are in the service of the State, contrived to squander in one season the Government subsidy for three years, amounting to a 'total of 90,000 roubles! The matter has never been cleared up, and although the delinquent officials in high places were ' removed from the management, they have been appointed to still higher offices!' The italics are Captain Telfer's..

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But whatever faults may fairly be found with Russian alministration, it must be admitted that the preliminary task

subiugation has, with one small exception, been fully and effectually accomplished. Western writers sometimes assume that the perpetual presence of a large army is necessary to keep in order the Caucasian provinces, and hence that in time of war they must prove a serious embarrassment to Russia. Our newspapers now and then foster this belief by a paragraph headed in large type, Revolt in the Caucasus.'

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No support for any such calculation is to be found in any of the volumes before us, and it seems ludicrous enough to those who understand the condition of the country. The Western Caucasus was made a desert through the act by which Russia supplied the Sultan with his, lately too famous, Circassian subjects. Even when Schamyl was at the height of his power the Mohammedans of the central valleys remained faithful to the Czar. The conquest of Daghestan if slow was proportionately sure, and the tribes have of late years been leniently and judiciously governed. The career

of the last and only agitator since Schamyl's fall was brought to a speedy end by his own countrymen, who sent in his head, wrapped in its green turban, to the Russian commander. Local disorders may from time to time take place. A band of Kurds from the Turkish highlands commits a murder on the Erivan road; Svanetian villagers, misled by the contemptuous long-suffering of their masters, venture on open resistance and murder. But such puny outbreaks are speedily quelled by a few Cossack Sotnias' or the Kabardan militia. For some time to come the tribes of the Caucasus will be one of Russia's best recruiting grounds. The danger, if it be one, which threatens the northern empire from this quarter is of another nature. There are Russian politicians who fear that the vigorous races which inhabit the Caucasian isthmus may be welded together too successfully, and that a prince resident at Tiflis may some day aspire to independence of Petersburg.

Herr von Thielmann is very careful and accurate, and leaves few corrections to be made. The snow-level in Svanety is wrongly put at 12,000 feet, owing probably to a statement of Herr Radde's that he gathered plants on the rocks of Elbruz at this height. Herr Radde elsewhere puts the snow-level on the south side of the chain at 9,600 feet. On the northern slopes, as in the Himalaya, it is, owing to the drier climate, considerably higher. The glaciers, of course, descend lower. The great Karagam Glacier, on the northern slopes of the Adai Khoch group, reaches 5,700 feet, and several of the icestreams in Svanety stop short but little above 7,000 feet. Statistics of the rainfall at various stations in the Caucasus show an enormous excess of wet in the Rion basin in comparison to Daghestan or the Armenian highlands. The main snowy chain and the Suram hills catch and shut in the vapours of the Black Sea, and statements as to the limits of vegetable or snowy zones based on observations taken on the southern slopes between Adai Khoch and Elbruz do not hold good for

the rest of the country. The Caucasus has, in fact, not one, but half a dozen climates, and the generalisations sometimes hazarded on this and similar subjects require constant qualification.

On another page we are told that there are no broad glacier basins, like those of the Bernese Oberland or the Bernina, in the Caucasus. A few years ago it was declared that there were no glaciers at all, and the old delusion dies hard. Herr von Thielmann would not write thus if he had visited the northern glaciers of Kotchan Tau or the vast snowfields of the Adai Khoch group. We may add that the comparison based on the statistics given by the Russian staff of the comparative extent of Swiss and Caucasian icefields is worthless, for the reason that no one has yet ascertained the extent of the Caucasian snows, which are absurdly understated on all Government maps.

The third and most recent of the works above alluded to is that by Captain Telfer. The author comes before us in two handsome volumes with every advantage of type, paper, and illustration. But he has other and more important recommendations to notice. Married to a Russian lady, and speaking the language well, he had opportunities of observation such as fall to the lot of few travellers. Every civility-from the loan of the imperial copy of the Times,' to the permission to accompany a magistrate on his official tour through Svanetywas extended to him. Captain Telfer has, on the whole, made excellent use of his facilities. His two volumes are replete with the most varied information. Instead of dashing off, touristfashion, a hasty diary of personal adventure, he has been at the pains to search libraries and make himself master of the facts to be gathered from previous publications. The value of his book is much increased by the footnote references to the authority for each statement; an excellent practice we recommend to the imitation of travel-writers. Its principal fault lies in its arrangement. The information given is so copious that the facts-archæological, ethnological, and so on-might, we think, have been grouped with advantage, at any rate to students, in special chapters, instead of being allowed to fall by the wayside as chance ordered.

The comparative familiarity of the country gone over in the first volume is compensated for by the interesting additions made by Captain Telfer to the reports of his predecessors. The remains of Ouplitz-Tzyche, a rock-hewn city of unknown date, near Gori, appear to rival those of Petra in interest. It is a town with public buildings, houses, large and small, con

veniently arranged in rooms furnished with doorways and windows, and ornamented in many cases with beams, pillars, mouldings and cornices. The streets and lanes are provided with steps and grooves for carrying off water. There are

also open spaces and squares, yet,' says Captain Telfer, the 'whole has been entirely hewn and shaped out of the solid 'rock.' In general character these excavations we cannot call them ruins-resemble those of Wardzia, near Achaltzich, described by Herr von Thielmann and attributed to the twelfth century. From Erivan, the ruins of the monastery of Keghart, whence we have copies of numerous inscriptions, as well as those of the fortress of Kharny, said to have been built by Tiridates, were visited. Tiflis and the Dariel are beaten ground, but Captain Telfer secures our attention by his sketch of the history of the Ossetes, and still more by his vivid account of the day's entertainment offered him at the Ossete village of Olghyush, near Vladikafkaz.

But the most interesting and instructive portion of his book is the description of his visit to Svanety, in the company of a Russian official. This district, which has lately become celebrated for the extraordinary splendour of its scenery, had previously been known only for the violence of its inhabitants. The Svany, who profess Christianity, are a mixed race, sprung from the various refugees who have at different times sought shelter between the snowy spurs of Tau Leila and the great icefields of Kotchan Tau in the least accessible fastness of the Caucasian chain. The portion of the valley next to the gorge by which the river escapes towards the sea, had submitted to the rule of a family of Kabardan princes. The villages in the highest glens, from which issue the glacier-fed sources of the Ingur, long acknowledged no external authority, and were neglected by the Russians, who, if the statistics given by Captain Telfer may be relied on,* had good reason to hope these undesirable subjects would, left to themselves, soon cease to be formidable. It was in this state of things that Herr Radde, and subsequently a party of our countrymen, whose journey is recorded in The Central Caucasus,' traversed the district from end to end, visiting many of its most remote glens. Fired, perhaps, by the travellers' tales of a region nominally at least under his control, Count Levaschoff, then Governor of Mingrelia, made in 1869 a military promenade through the mountains at the head of 600 men. This formidable incursion,

The Svany were computed in 1835 to number 30,000. they had sunk to 7,000, according to the official census.

In 1874

which was not followed up by any practical steps for throwing the country open by means of new roads, seems to have rather irritated than awed the Svany. In 1871 the Russian Government, which up to this time had only maintained a post of a dozen Cossacks at Pari, a hamlet in the lower and comparatively civilised portion of the district, found it necessary to plant a garrison of a hundred men at Betscho, on the banks of a branch of the Ingur, from whose head a glacier-pass, commonly used by the mountaineers, gives access to, and, therefore, possibility of relief from, the Kabardah. How much respect the presence of these troops ensured for the representative of the Russian Government is amusingly shown by Captain Telfer:

'One of the objects of the Chief's official tour in the upper valley of the Ingur was to superintend the fresh elections of the mamasaklysy and their pamóshtchnyky in the several communes; and notice having been given upon our arrival that the voters for Kala and Oushkoul were to assemble in the morning, the male population of those two communes began to muster in front of our encampment at nine o'clock, and when all had assembled the proceedings were opened with an address from the Chief. The instantaneous and unanimous expression of opinion being that the Chief should himself select the most fitting men, the Colonel had to explain at some length that he could only approve the choice of the people, as it was quite impossible for him to make judicious appointments, seeing that every man was a perfect stranger to him. Some dissatisfaction was shown at this reply, but after a time the crowd moved away, and almost immediately hurried back, pushing to the front one of their number who was doing his best to resist. The favourite refused to be the "elder," in the first place because his three years' term as sélsky soudyà, " rural judge," had just expired and he desired to be released from further responsibility, and because he thought no greater misfortune could visit him than that of becoming mamasaklysy. "I killed a man in the next village to this "ten years ago; I have paid his relations the full amount of bloodแ money, but they are not satisfied, and I believe that they are seeking an opportunity for revenge; if I am made mamasaklysy I know what "I will do-I will kill another of the family, the man who wants to "kill me." This was the explanation offered; but the Chief told him, that if he persisted in making such a statement he should arrest him, and have him tried for murder; on the other plea, however, that of having already served as judge, he was entitled to decline the new honour, and a fresh election must take place. The determination of the people was not to be altered, for they clamoured in favour of the late judge, and vox populi being vox Dei, he was prevailed upon to accept the office.'

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The occasional dangers and annoyances incident to a judge's office in the Caucasian Alsatia may be estimated from the following narrative:

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