Part 4

The stage between Ananur and Pasanaur (21 versts), is the longest on the whole road, and, although it presents no engineering difficulties such as those which were met with farther to the northward, it is, nevertheless, a toilsome journey for the horses, as it rises about 1300 feet. I shall never forget the pleasant emotions I felt on making the night journey from Pasanaur to Ananur; although there was no moon, the stars shone with a brightness that is unknown in northern latitudes, and lighted up the strange, beautiful landscape; the glittering snow-peaks behind, the silvery stream at our side, the green forests and the lonely ruins made up a picture of surpassing loveliness and weirdness. Fort Gudomakarsk is soon visible, and we know that the station is not far off. I may as well say that almost all the so-called forts between Tiflis and Vladikavkaz are insignificant, neglected-looking places, merely small barracks; they formerly served to keep the mountaineers in order, but now there is really very little necessity for maintaining a garrison in them.

Pasanaur (which in old Persian means "Holy Hill") is situated in a very narrow part of the valley, amid thick woods. The station is a pretty one, and, like that at Ananur, so comfortable that the traveller who has to spend a night there need not be pitied. The only building of interest in the village is a modern church in the Russian style of architecture, which looks as if it had been painted with laundry blue; for ugliness it can compare with any church in Muscovy.

To the eastward of Pasanaur live the Khevsurs, Pshavs and Tushes, peoples probably having a common origin, and speaking a language akin to Georgian. Their number is variously estimated, from twenty to thirty thousand. They live in a very primitive way, and the Khevsurs still clothe themselves in chain armour and helmets; this circumstance, added to the fact that they have long been Christians, has given rise to the supposition that they are descended from a party of Crusaders who lost their way in trying to return to Europe overland, and settled in these valleys. Their country is among the wildest in the whole range, and their villages are perched high up among the rocks, like eagles' nests. The Khevsurs live chiefly on the scanty products of agriculture; the Pshavs and Tushes are pastoral peoples, in winter they drive their flocks down into Kakheti, and when the snow among the mountains begins to melt they return to their native valleys. All these tribes are wild and brave to the highest degree; from the earliest times they have formed part of the Georgian kingdom, and have distinguished themselves in many a battle against the infidel. The Christianity of this region is not so elaborate as that of Rome or Byzantium, but I suppose it is quite as reasonable as that of the Russian muzhik or the English farm-labourer; they have made a saint of Queen Tamara, and they worship the god of war and several other deities in addition to the God Christ. Irakli II. tried to reform their theology, but they replied, "If we, with our present worship, are firm in our obedience and loyalty to the king, what more does he ask of us?" There are now many Orthodox Greek Churches in the villages, but the people totally ignore their existence.

After leaving Pasanaur the road bends to the westward, leaving on the right a high table-shaped mountain of granite which has for a long time seemed to bar our progress; we still keep close to the Aragva, and the scenery becomes bolder, and the soil more barren; here and there we see high up on the face of the rock a cluster of Osset houses; from the valley they look like small dark holes in the cliffs. Pushkin has described them as "swallows' nests," and no happier name could have been chosen.

The Ossets call themselves Ir or Iran, the Tatars and Georgians call them Oss or Ossi. According to official accounts they number over 100,000, about half of them being on each side of the Caucasus. The majority of them profess the Christian religion, but 15,000 are Mahometans, and a considerable number are idolaters. Their traditions say that they came from Asia across the Ural, and used at one time to dwell in the plain to the north of the Caucasus, but were gradually driven into the mountains by stronger peoples. In the reign of Queen Tamara most of them embraced Christianity, and Tamara's second husband was an Osset; they remained tributary to Georgia until the beginning of the present century, and a traveller who visited Tiflis about a hundred years ago says that Irakli's bodyguard was composed of Ossets "who never washed." The Ossets were the first Caucasian people to settle down quietly to Russian rule, and they have never given any serious trouble, if we except their share in the Imeretian rising of 1810. The stories about the Ossets being a Teutonic people are as absurd as the assertion that there are in the Crimea Northmen who speak Dutch. They live in a wretched manner, in houses built of loose stones, without mortar; but their physique is good, and their faces are handsome and engaging.

After another long climb of 1300 feet we reach Mleti. Here, indeed, we have come to the end of the valley--we are at the bottom of a deep well with sides as bare and steep as walls, on the top glitters the everlasting snow. The engineering difficulties which we have hitherto encountered are as nothing compared with those before us. To our right rises a precipice over three thousand feet high, up which the road climbs in a series of zigzags.

Soon after leaving Mleti we saw the sun set behind the silvery peaks to the west, and within half an hour it was dark; our driver was drunk and fast asleep, and we had occasionally to seize the reins in order to keep the horses from going too near the fenceless edge of the abyss. The distance to Gudaur is only fourteen and a half versts, but nearly the whole ascent has to be done at walking pace; slowly we rose up the hillside, gazing silently now up at the glistening chain above us, now down into the gloomy valley behind us, where a fleecy waterfall shone in the starlight; we saw no wayfarers all the time, and no sound came to break the stillness of the summer night.

At last we reached the tableland at the top, and were soon in the station-house of Gudaur, almost 8000 feet above sea-level. Although there were only patches of snow here and there on the ground near us, the air was very cool; only a few days ago we had been simmering in Tiflis in a heat of over 100° Fahr., and now we saw the thermometer down at freezing-point. I knew that as far as comfort went Mleti was a much better place than Gudaur to spend the night at, but I was eager to enjoy the delightful intoxication of the mountain air as soon and as long as possible, and I did enjoy it thoroughly.

After a very rough and hasty supper and a short walk on the edge of the plateau, we entered the common room, and wrapping ourselves up in our burkas, sought out the softest plank on the floor, and were soon sleeping the sleep of innocence. Several travellers arrived during the night, for when we rose at dawn we found the room full. Leaving our companions to snore in peace, we ordered the horses, and were soon on our way to the pass.

On the grassy plain were feeding large flocks of goats and sheep, the latter with strange, large, fatty protuberances on either side of the tail. To the right is a remarkable-looking green hill of pyramidal shape, and beyond it an old castle looks down from an inaccessible crag. The scenery of the pass itself is imposing, but it is seen to better advantage when one comes in the opposite direction, i.e. from Vladikavkaz to Tiflis; in that case one leaves a scene of the wildest desolation for the luxuriant beauty of the Aragva valley and Kartli; on the northward journey it is, of course, the reverse. The road sinks very rapidly to a depth of almost 2000 feet; the long snow-sheds remind us that even at the present day a winter journey over the Cross Mountain is a serious undertaking; traffic is often stopped for several days at a time by avalanches, and in spring the rivers sometimes wash away the bridges and large pieces of the road. At the foot of the mountain we meet the foaming Terek, a river almost as muddy as the Kura, and following its course reach a vast plain, on the east side of which stands Kobi.

Near Kobi station there are two villages; the larger of the two lies under the shadow of a perpendicular rock on the one side, on the other side it is flanked by a rugged crag, on the top of which may be seen the ruins of a church and a castle. By the roadside are curious monumental tablets, painted with hieroglyphs of various kinds, among which the rising sun generally occupies the chief place. All round Kobi there are numerous medicinal springs of all kinds, and the station-house is intended to accommodate a few patients. There may come a day when Kobi will be as fashionable as Kissingen, but in the meantime it is not the sort of place that one would recommend to an invalid.

On the score of originality nothing can be said against the environs of Kobi; when we looked round we could not help thinking of the phrase "riddlings of creation," which we have heard applied to the Scottish Highlands; it does, indeed, look as if some of the materials left over after the creation of our earth, had been left here in disordered heaps, to give us some idea of chaos. The road now follows the course of the Terek, and the scenery is indescribably grand; straight before us lies snowy Kazbek in all its rugged wildness, here and there are ruined towers, and about the middle of the stage a turn in the road brings us to an aul, or village, of mediæval appearance, by the side of which is a little copse, a rarity in this bleak district. The basaltic rocks present many fantastic shapes and colours to the eye; in several places I saw what looked like huge bundles of rods, reminding me of the Giant's Causeway. Before reaching the station we were met by children who offered for sale all sorts of crystals, pieces of quartz and other pretty geological specimens.

Kazbek station is a very comfortable inn, where one can dine well, and is to be recommended as a place for a prolonged stay. The mountain, generally called Kazbek, rises from the valley in one almost unbroken mass, reaching a height of 16,550 feet above sea-level; the Georgians call it Mkhinvari (ice mountain), and the Ossets, Christ's Peak; Kazbek is really the name of the family who own this part of the country, and is wrongly applied to the mountain. This peak, like Ararat, enjoys the reputation of being inaccessible, and our countrymen, Freshfield, Moore, and Tucker, who climbed to the top, without much difficulty, in June, 1868, were not believed when they told the story of their ascent. On the mountain the sportsman can occasionally get a shot at a tur (aurochs, Ægoceros Pallasii); but if he is unwilling to expose himself to the necessary danger and fatigue, he can for a few roubles buy a pair of horns at the station.

Those who invade the realm of the mountain spirit should not fail to visit Devdorak glacier, the easiest way of making the ascent; there they will see a place where the native hunters make sacrifices of tur horns to propitiate the spirit, who might otherwise throw blocks of ice down on their heads.

There is a popular legend to the effect that on the summit of Mkhinvari is the tent of the Patriarch Abraham, within which, in a cradle held up by an unseen hand, lies the child Jesus asleep; outside there grows some wheat of wonderful size, beside the tree of life; round the cradle are heaps of treasures. Under the reign of King Irakli II., a priest and his son started for the summit in order to see these wonders; the boy returned alone, bearing samples of the material of the tent, some big grains of wheat, &c., the soles of his boots were covered with silver coins which had stuck to them--unfortunately it was found that the coins were quite modern!

As is well known, Mkhinvari is generally identified with the story of Prometheus, although the mountain does not correspond with the description given by Æschylus. Early travellers even went so far as to assert that they had seen the very chains with which the hero was bound, and there is a local legend to the effect that a giant still lies there in fetters. When I approached the mountain from Kobi I could not help being reminded of Prometheus. I saw a gigantic black space of irregular form with snow all round it; an imaginative mind found in this irregular tract a considerable resemblance to the human shape.

No traveller should leave Kazbek without making a pilgrimage to the monastery of St. Stephen, which stands on the top of an isolated hill about 2000 feet above the station. At sunset the view is wonderfully beautiful. Tradition says that the monastery was built by three kings, but does not give their names; in any case the building is of considerable antiquity. Service is held in the church three times a year. The interior has been spoiled by that fiend the "restorer." From the church you look over a wide, uninhabited valley to the giant mountain, and on turning round you see the river Terek, on the banks of which are the station and village; on either hand stretch dark cavernous-looking valleys. Beyond the Terek is the home of the Ingushes, a people who frequently carry off the cattle of their more settled neighbours, and give the small garrison of Kazbek some amusement in hunting them down.

After leaving Kazbek, we see on our right the manor-house of the princely family from which the place takes its name, a family which has produced, and doubtless will yet produce, sons which will be an honour to Georgia; the house is a fine two-storey edifice, and there is a pretty chapel attached to it. In a few minutes we reach the Mad Ravine, so called from a torrent of terrible impetuosity, which has formed one of the most serious obstacles to the construction of the road. We now enter Dariel, the pass from which the road takes its name, one of the grandest spots on earth.

According to philologists, Dariel is derived from an old Persian word meaning gate (cf. Der-bend, Thuer, door, Slav Dver, &c.), and in fact it was here that the ancient geographers placed the site of the famous Caucasian Gates; but surely there is something to be said in favour of the local tradition which connects the place with Darius I. of Persia. As for the gates, it is, of course, impossible to say definitely whether they ever existed or not, at all events there are several points where it would not have been very difficult to construct them.

At the entrance of the ravine, on the left bank of the Terek, stands a high rock, on which may be seen the ruins of a castle, said to have been founded in 150 B.C., but doubtless having a still longer history. This castle is always associated with the name of a certain wicked Queen Tamara, a mythical creation of the popular fancy, and Lermontov has written a very pretty poem based on the legend. It is said that this Tamara (not to be confounded with the good Tamara), was very beautiful, and that she used to invite all the handsome young men who passed that way to come up and live with her, promising them all the delights that heart could wish for; after one night of bliss the unfortunate gentleman was deprived of his head, and was then thrown down into the Terek, which bore away his body. If the legend is not wrong in saying that the river carried away the corpses, the frolicsome monarch must have been comparatively constant during the summer months, or else the pile of wantons would soon have become large enough to frighten all the passion out of intending visitors, for in the month of June, Terek would not float a respectably-sized cat.

By the road-side is Dariel Fort, a romantic-looking place with old-fashioned battlemented towers; a few Kazaks are quartered here, and must find the time hang very heavily on their hands. When you reach this fort it looks as if it were impossible to go beyond it, a mighty wall stretches right across the path; but the road follows the course of the river, indeed it is built in the river-bed, and winds along between awful cliffs whose summits are lost in the clouds, and whose flanks are seldom or never touched by a ray of sunlight. We sometimes hear of places where a handful of men could keep back an army, this is one of them; a touch would send down upon the road some of the heavy, overhanging masses of rock, and effectually close the pass. About fifty years ago an avalanche fell here, from the glacier of Devdorak, and it was two years before the rubbish was all cleared away. When the new road is blocked by snow or carried away by floods, the old road, high up near the snow-line, has to be used.

The scenery of this pass has been described by Pushkin, Lermontov, and many others, but it is one of the few places that do not disappoint the traveller, however much he may have expected. It must not be forgotten that the road through this narrow gorge is the only passable one that crosses the Caucasian range; there are, it is true, one or two other tracks, but they are not practicable for wheeled carriages.

In the most gloomy part of the defile the road crosses by a bridge to the left bank of the Terek, and a few versts farther on we emerge into comparatively open ground at Lars. I had, as usual, given my podorozhnaia (road-pass) to a stable-boy, with a request to get the horses ready without delay, and was sitting drinking tea, when I was astonished to hear behind me the long unfamiliar tones of my native language; I was still more surprised when I saw that the speaker was the starosta, or superintendent of the station (the Government inspector, or smatritel, is the real chief). He told me that he had seen from my pass that I was English, and had taken the liberty to come and have a chat with me. He spoke English fluently, and has spent five years in London, has travelled in the United States, and is altogether a very pleasant fellow; he had only been at Lars a year and a half, and during all that time had not seen an Englishman. We parted very good friends, expecting to meet again when I returned from Vladikavkaz.

The village of Lars, north of the post-house, is inhabited, among others, by some of the Tagaur Ossets, descended from Tagaur, an individual who at a remote period was heir to the Armenian throne, and fled to the mountains for fear of his younger brothers. Their royal descent leads them to think themselves superior to the poor folk among whom they dwell, and they are cordially disliked by the latter. Just outside the village is one of the towers which are so common all along the road; it doubtless yielded a handsome revenue to its owner in the good old days when every traveller had to pay a heavy toll for the privilege of passing one of these fortresses.

We still keep close to the Terek, which comes rushing down from Dariel with a fall of one foot in every thirty. Pushkin, comparing the Terek with Imatra, in Finland, unhesitatingly declares the superiority of the former in grandeur. Of course the surrounding scenery in the two cases is quite different, but as far as the rivers themselves are concerned, I must dissent from the poet, for I know no part of the Terek worthy of comparison with the fall of the Wuokses at Imatra, which is the very materialization of the idea of irresistible, pitiless power.

Although the valley is now a little wider than it was a few miles to the south, the scenery still has the same grandeur and sternness until we pass between the rocks that come down close to either bank of the river, and come out into the plain in which stands Fort Djerakhovsk, a rectangular edifice, about 120 feet long, which is fully garrisoned. We are not quite clear of the mountains, however, until we have passed Balta, and have got within five versts of Vladikavkaz. Before us stretches a smooth, green plain as far as the eye can reach; the contrast is most striking; it is as if we had been suddenly transported from Switzerland to Holland.

Vladikavkaz, 200 versts from Tiflis, lies at the foot of the Caucasus, at a height of 2368 feet. The best hotel is the Pochtovaya, at the post-station; the Frantsiya is also good. Vladikavkaz means, in Russian, "master of the Caucasus" (cf. Vladivostok, Vladimir, &c.--root vlad is akin to German walt-en, Gewalt); the Cherkesses (Circassians) call it Kapkai, "gate of the mountains." It has a population of over 30,000 souls, chiefly Russians, Cherkesses, Georgians, Armenians, Persians, besides a strong garrison. A fortress was built here in 1784, but the town never became a trading centre of much importance until the war with Shamil; even now one is astonished to see how little activity them is in a place through which nearly all the overland traffic between Europe and Western Asia passes. Several chimney stalks bear witness to the existence of industry, but the only manufactory of any size is a spirit distillery. The silver work of Vladikavkaz is renowned throughout the whole Caucasus, and is much used for dagger hilts and sheaths, belts, &c.

The city is built on the banks of the Terek, which is here crossed by several bridges; the best quarter is on the right bank, where there are cool, shady gardens by the waterside, and a very respectable-looking boulevard. A few of the streets are fairly well paved, and there are one or two comfortable-looking houses with pleasant grounds; but on the whole the place is not one that anybody would care to settle down in. Were it not for the frequency with which one sees Asiatic costumes, and hears Asiatic tongues, and the fact that the frosty Caucasus may be seen, apparently perpendicular, rising to its loftiest points, it would be easy to imagine oneself in some provincial town not 100 versts from Moscow, instead of being 2000 versts from it.

When you have lounged in the gardens, and on the boulevard, visited the cathedral, which is still in course of construction, the market, the military school, and the old fortress, you have obtained all the diversion that is to be had in Vladikavkaz, unless you are fortunate enough to find the little theatre open, and the best thing to be done is to take the morning train to the Mineral Waters station (186 versts in nine hours) for the town called Five Mountains (Pyatigorsk), about twenty versts from the railway, which for almost a hundred years has enjoyed the reputation of being the most fashionable inland watering-place in the Russian Empire.

THE KAKHETIAN ROAD--TIFLIS TO SIGNAKH.