CHAPTER XVIII FROM MIDWINTER TO MIDSUMMER

For two or three weeks Sidney and Raymond had had their gaze and their hopes fixed on the summit of the Caucasus, a soaring line that neared them, oh, so slowly! They had toiled up, up, with alternating courage and despondency. At times the tremendous chasms which they had been obliged to cross had given them the disagreeable impression that they were climbing for the sole purpose of descending again. Always, however, when at the end of a couple of days they took definite note of results, they found there had been an appreciable increase of elevation added to their credit.

Sometimes they looked back and down on the vicinity of a previous camp with such a feeling of height gained that they were elated. And again a day passed with hardly any perceptible accomplishment. When, therefore, they finally actually stood on the summit, their delight was boundless. They shouted and jumped and capered on the lonely crest as though they had taken leave of their senses. One would have supposed that their journey was finished and all the hard work was done. To the casual observer, though, there would have seemed to be still something left.

The boys were standing on old, hardened snow that had undoubtedly been in place for many years, and that was pierced only occasionally by rocks so gray as to be hardly distinguishable from the dingy snow itself.

Back of them, by the route on which they had come through Daghestan, the immediate slopes were densely covered with snow, but beyond, only the high elevations were clothed in their first white robe of early fall. The prospect that way was Arctic and forbidding.

In front of them, how different! At their feet,--more than two miles of perpendicular descent below them,--lay the great valley of Georgia. It was crossed and marked by scores of thread-like, glistening lines, the streams and canals that carried water over its fields and meadows. All was glowing and smiling in the tints of summer, where even autumn, much less winter, had not yet approached.

In the checkerboard of cultivated country there were squares of dark, rich green that indicated orange groves, and other divisions of ashy green that proclaimed orchards of olive trees. It was a glorious and beautiful scene, and was like a fairy transformation after the barren ranges and desolate slopes of Daghestan.

Beyond that brilliant valley, as though to remind the beholder that all to the south was not soft and warm, towered the snow-capped mountains of Armenia. In the west, across a jumble of mountains that rose at the upper end of the Georgian valley, the boys saw a hazy line which they were sure must be the Black Sea, and their hearts throbbed faster as they looked.

The travelers were viewing the wonderful panorama from a height of fully twelve thousand feet, and only in the western portions of the range were points that were higher. To the east the range dropped much lower, and when the boys turned that way they saw, off on the dim horizon, a level line that was, without doubt, the Caspian.

“Gee! Sid,” exclaimed Raymond as they gazed in wonder, “I thought I had been on mountains before, but this beats everything.”

“And such a difference!--the dead of winter on one side, and the middle of summer on the other.”

“No wonder we were cold back there,” said Raymond, as he looked over the snowy wastes through which they had passed. “But, jiminy, won’t I be glad to get down on that side!” And he turned with longing to the warmth and beauty of the south.

“It will be a short job to get down,” said Sidney; “it’s almost a straight drop.”

“How about the trail?” suggested Raymond; “there certainly is none in sight here.”

When the boys looked down on the slope immediately below them they saw, what they had not before observed, in their enthusiasm over the view, that the snow did not descend more than half a mile on that side. The trail across the summit was entirely obliterated, at least, the boys could find none; and for a short distance down the south side also, none appeared. A little farther down, however, the snow was melted along the line of the trail, leaving it plainly visible, while on either side the ground was covered thick. Beyond the snow, also, the road could occasionally be seen where an angle of it came out on some ridge.

“You see, Ray,” said Sidney, “it’s not far to a good trail at any rate. We can go down that ridge, and we’ll soon be out of the deep snow.”

“Yes, and then we’ll be in slush.”

“Well, that won’t last long, either. And I’d rather have a little slush than much of such work as we had this morning.”

“Heck! Sid,” said Raymond, “I hope that country down there will be like western Texas in the winter, with no rain.”

“Remember,” said Sidney, “that western Texas sometimes has northers, and they’re worse than rain.”

“I’ll guarantee there’ll be no northers down there,” declared Raymond. “It would take a pretty vigorous norther to get over these mountains.”

“Well, once we’re down, we shan’t wait for one; we’ll hike right on to Tiflis and the railroad. It seems as though we ought almost to see Tiflis from here.”

“I’ll bet we could if we had glasses. Gee! wouldn’t it be swell to have a pair of prism binoculars? We could see everything from the Black Sea to the Caspian, and the other way to Nizhni.”

“They would be good ones.” And Sidney laughed. “But we don’t want to take it all out in looking. It must be about noon; suppose we eat a lunch and then start down.”

“No more lunches in the snow for me,” declared Raymond. “I’ll take my next lunch on _terra firma_.”

“All right,” assented Sidney; “then we’d better get a move on.”

Without stopping to hunt any longer for a trail over the top, the boys started down a ridge that appeared to intersect the road below. At first the snow was deep, and the traveling was bad, but the sun was warm and the air was still, and soon, as Raymond had predicted, they were in slush. That did not last long, but it was followed by a zone of mud. That, too, was soon past, and by the time the travelers reached the road, they were walking on dry ground.

With exclamations of delight the boys threw themselves down in the warm sun, and stretching out at full length, ate a dry lunch with utmost relish. As soon as that was concluded they took the road again, with a desire to reach a level that would give a decidedly warmer climate for their next camp.

The trail went down the tremendous mountain wall by a series of switchbacks. There would be a long zigzag, consisting of twelve or fifteen sharp angles, back and forth down a steep face of rock; then the trail would run off to one side across the heads of half a dozen gullies that were transformed below into deep and precipitous ravines; or perhaps it would descend for a distance at a less acute angle down the backbone of a long ridge.

Nearly all the time, as the travelers descended, they were enraptured with a view of the magnificent panorama that was spread out before them. With all their experience of mountain travel they had never before seen anything to equal it. If they had ever crossed the Alps in early spring from Switzerland to Italy, they would have been supplied with a comparison, though the prospect before them was much grander and more extended than that afforded by the journey down the Alps.

“I suppose,” said Sidney, as they were trotting down a zigzag with nothing to obstruct the view, “that those high mountains in the distance must be in Asia.”

“Wouldn’t it be swell, Sid, to have topographic maps of this country! Do you think they have anything like our Geological Survey maps?”

“That’s not likely, in a wild country like this.”

“But we have maps of wild mountains.”

“Yes, but that’s in the United States.”

“Where I wish we were, this minute,” declared Raymond fervently.

“I believe we’ve done our hardest work,” said Sidney, “so don’t get blue. Won’t it be fine, though, to get aboard a train at Tiflis!”

“The finest will be a steamer on the Black Sea, and then home; think of that, Sid!”

“I hope Turkey is not mixed up in the war. I have a sort of an idea that she controls the Black Sea, and unless she has joined Russia and England we may have trouble in getting out.”

“What should we do, then?” asked Raymond.

“I don’t know, but I’m sure Americans would be allowed through if anybody would.”

By night the boys had descended so far that the air was soft and warm, and they did not need to seek a spot that was sheltered from cold winds. They chose a level place and spread their blankets in the open, with only the blue sky overhead. It was very different from their camp of the previous night, and, indeed, as they lay on the ground looking up at the twinkling stars, it did not seem possible that such a transformation could be reality and not a dream.

The boys, however, did not take much time for star-gazing, and the aching of their muscles all over their bodies assured them that what they had gone through was no dream. Their prodigious exertions of the previous days culminated in overwhelming fatigue, and they had hardly more than lain down when sleep made them oblivious of everything.

Sidney and Raymond had camped out so much, and so rarely with anything more than blankets to place between them and the earth, that they could sleep on any spot, however hard. If their bed were free from loose rocks they asked nothing more. Sleep, such as they had that night, is a great restorer, and in the morning the boys felt equal to anything that might be ahead of them.

The travelers observed no habitations on the south slope of the range, and in fact the descent was so short and so precipitous that it would have been impossible for any one to make a home there. Even the hardy tribes who had established villages in the almost inaccessible mountains of Daghestan would not have had the temerity to attempt a colony on the opposite slope of the Caucasus.

By noon of the next day, however, the boys had reached the upper margin of the beautiful valley of the Alazan: a valley where the dwellers conducted water wherever they pleased, and that was made luxuriant by the stimulus of irrigation under a warm sun. There the languid air of a semi-tropic early autumn was laden with the fragrance of ripening grapes. A luscious late crop of figs hung heavy on their stems, and pomegranates had burst their rinds to show the crimson kernels within.

In groves of glossy dark orange trees golden globes gleamed amidst the rich foliage, and the ashy green of the olives was set thick with the black of ripened fruit. All was luxurious warmth, abundance, and peace, and seemed to the boys, after the rugged, sterile mountains over which they had toiled, to be a veritable Happy Valley.

The travelers found the people whom they encountered to be very different from the stern inhabitants of the rugged mountains of Daghestan. Indeed, such a type would have been impossible in the languorous air of the Southern valley. The Georgians appeared a mild, gentle folk, and much more fair of face than their neighbors across the mountain barrier.

It was easy to make the owners of the gardens and groves understand that a purchase of fruit was desired, and a delicious variety was heaped before the boys in return for the silver coin which Sidney tendered. And how they did feast! Only one who has been entirely without fruit and vegetables for many days could understand what that abundance meant to the boys. Besides, the semi-tropical fruits reminded them of their own Southwestern home, and created a longing of homesickness that was painful in its intensity.

As it was easy to obtain food, so also there was an open hospitality that made the tramp of two or three days across to Tiflis an enjoyment rather than a task. Possibly the people were not more hospitable than those of Daghestan, and it may be that the soft air and beautiful surroundings lent to them a seeming of suave courtesy. At any rate, the boys thoroughly enjoyed that part of their journey, and it was the first time that they had felt real enjoyment.

While the valleys were filled with luxuriant growth, fostered by the streams that were conducted in canals over their surface, the mountains were more forbidding, and that condition, also, reminded the boys of their own Southwest. They found Tiflis situated where the Kura River emerged from between high bare mountains.

There ended the long tramp of hundreds of miles, and the boys paused and looked back at the sky-line of white that marked the crest of the great Caucasus Range over which they had climbed. As they looked, and their minds ran back over the way by which they had come, the distance to the Caspian, where they had left the steamer, seemed infinity.

“I guess it’s a good thing we didn’t know what was ahead of us when we left Nizhni, Sid,” said Raymond as they gazed.

“If we had known I don’t believe I should have been willing to tackle it. But it would have been easy if we could have come by wagon through the Dariel Pass, as we planned.”

At Tiflis the boys saw evidence of war preparations again, in companies of soldiers that were passing in the streets. They proceeded directly to the railway station, where they tried, without success, to obtain news of the war. The railway agent replied “Yes” to every question they asked, but that was not very enlightening, as their questions were varied. So they purchased second-class tickets to Batum, and took the first train that arrived.