COLLECTING ORTHOPTERA IN THE CAUCASUS AND TRANSCAUCASUS. 299 



It rapidly grew dark and my driver, a worthy Russian, became 

 nervous and begged me to hurry out of the gorge, for he feared the 

 Ingush. They are dark and dangerous men, he said, and master 

 thieves. Probably he exaggerated greatly, but we had seen a dozen 

 or so, in their black c/ierkess and sharp kinjal, and high fur-hat, riding 

 their little hill-horses through the foam of the Terek, and I had been 

 particularly warned by a Russian friend to carry a revolver, and leave 

 my money at the hotel. 



So we drew up at the Second Redant, a wayside inn, kept by a 

 round-faced, black-eyed Georgian, who regaled me with most tasty 

 trout from the Terek, and the inevitable xhishlik, little pieces of meat 

 roasted on a skewer, preceded by a glass of vodka, and washed down 

 with a bottle of good Kakhetin wine. A cigarette over the coffee, a 

 pipe, and home to Vladikavkaz. 



The next morning broke misty and damp, and so robbed us of the 

 unrivalled view of the mountain screen which towers over the city. 

 Pressed for time, I decided to take the motor omnibus to Tiflis and 

 reach there the same night, satisfying myself with a fleeting glimpse 

 of the mountains. The more leisured traveller would do well to take 

 three to four days and drive or ride, and even stop a day or two at 

 some of the more beautiful spots. The oar was an open omnibus, 

 carrying eighteen passengers, none of which had been to Tiflis before. 

 My neighbour was a young officer from Warsaw, spending a brief 

 leave on a dash through the Caucasus to Baku, and home via Batum 

 and Odessa. All were genial and all Russians. 



Soon we were in the gorge, where the sun dispelled the mists, and 

 we whirled at breakneck speed, always mounting, till at Lars we 

 entered the romantic gorge of Darial itself, eternally famous from the 

 poems of Lermontoff, every stone washed with the blood of Russian 

 soldiers. The pass is narrow, and naked rocks rise sheer on each side, 

 while the Terek bubbles and boils in the middle. The road, cut 

 through the solid rock, is good, unfortunately, for we passed all too 

 quickly. We rushed past a conical hillock in the gorge, with lofty 

 clifi's on each aide ; on the top of the hill were perched the ruins of 

 the castle of Tamara, a semi-fabulous Princess, who is reputed to have 

 once reigned here with a rod of iron, in her grim and rocky fastness. 

 The monotony of the gloomy life of this Amazon queen was relieved 

 by frenzied outbursts of passionate and licentious orgies. This erotic 

 Caucasian Semiramis must not be confused with the Georgian empress 

 , of the same name, who flourished at Tiilis in the twelfth and thirteenth 

 centuries. 



We were now in the heart of the Mountain of Languages. In 

 those crags and forests, haunted by wolf and bear, by ibex and aurochs, 

 by boar and by leopard, dwell innumerable tribes and races, speaking 

 an astonishing diversity of tongues. I am credibly informed that it is 

 no exaggeration to say that over one hundred distinct languages and 

 dialects are spoken in the Caucasus. The difficulty of communication 

 has isolated families, and almost every village has developed its own 

 dialect. There appear to be three main autochthonus groups : the 

 Georgian, in the centre and west, the Circassian, in the extreme 

 west, and the Lesghian in Daghestan, in the east. The Georgians, 

 whom some suppose to be the descendants of the ancient 

 Medes, are a cultivated, orthodox people, who were christianised 



