38o THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



THE SUANETIANS AND THEIR HOME.* 



By DOUGLAS W. FEESHFIELD. 



ANEW recreation-ground is wanted for those of our country- 

 men who, without being travelers by profession, find 

 pleasure and refreshment in rough travel among primitive people, 

 in mountain scenery and glacier air, in that sense of adventure 

 and discovery which is afforded only by unknown countries or 

 virgin heights, and on unmapped snowy chains. To such trav- 

 elers — or vacation tourists — I offer the Caucasus. Here, if they 

 make a hobby of map construction and correction, or of any 

 branch of natural science, or of linguistic and ethnological 

 studies, they will find a field for much useful work. At any rate, 

 they may enjoy themselves, and while they do so they can hardly 

 fail to increase knowledge. The country has been brought well 

 within the reach of vacation tourists, of every one with a two 

 months' holiday. 



Nineteen years ago I described the first journey of exploration 

 made by mountaineers, in the technical sense of that word, in the 

 Caucasus, the ascents of its two most famous peaks, Elbruz and 

 Kazbeck, and the general character of the snowy-chain that con- 

 nects them. In July, 1887, in the company of M. de D^chy, and 

 with Alpine guides, I revisited this noble chain, twice crossed 

 some of its greatest glaciers, climbed several of its peaks, and 

 penetrated many hitherto unknown recesses. In the course of 

 these wanderings the mazes of the central group were unraveled, 

 and several prographical problems which had puzzled interme- 

 diate travelers received their final solution. 



For the moment I propose to limit myself to some notes on 

 the scenery and people of a single district of the Caucasus, the 

 mountain-girt basin of Suanetia, and one or two sketches of 

 travel among its glaciers and snow-fields. Suanetia is the upper 

 basin of the Ingur, a river which flows into the Black Sea a few 

 miles east of Sukkum Kaleh. It is about the size of the valley 

 of Aosta, forty miles long by fifteen broad. It lies between three 

 thousand and seven thousand feet above the sea. On its north 

 run the snowy ramparts of the Caucasian crest, inclosing in their 

 complicated ridges four great glacier basins, and sending down 

 more directly toward the Ingur or its tributaries many ice- 

 streams, such as the Adish, which would be ranked in the Alps 

 as glaciers of the first class. These ridges are composed of crys- 

 talline rocks, which show the tendency, observable in the Alps 

 (e. g., in the Mont Blanc and Pelvoux groups), to arrange their 



* From a paper read before the Eoyal Geographical Society, March 12, 1888. 



