TRIP TO VLADIKAVKAZ AND KARBARDA 215 



cavernous holes, troglodyte dwellings, terraces of them, 

 crescents of them. One more pretentious than the rest 

 was perhaps the Mtsketos mansion. There was 

 nothing to tell us. We " surmised," as historians say. 

 Mtsketos would have to live somewhere. 



Traffic was very brisk on this dustiest of dusty roads. 

 Strings of mules with gaily chiming bells passed us con- 

 stantly, phaetons, and rattHng telegas with passengers 

 of all kinds. Cossacks, in cool-looking white coats and 

 often with steeds to match, created a smoke trail of 

 blinding sand, and now and again, in a column of grit 

 circling feet high, a great britzka of omnibus variety 

 rolled past us conveying some Russian noble to the 

 celebrated springs of Pjatigorsk. s 



Bowling swiftly round a corner which landlocked 

 our view of the road ahead, Ali Ghirik, who had 

 somehow forged to the front in his troika loaded with 

 our multifarious packages, crashed into a slow-moving 

 fourgon laden high with a medley of silk, carpets, and 

 bright-coloured cushions. The telega, yamschik and 

 our servant were thrown a-heap into a snorting mass of 

 bewildered animals and tumbling bales. 



Ali detached himself in remarkably quick time, but, 

 in trying to avoid the frightened plunges of one of our 

 horses, he tripped on the verge of the shallow ravine 

 which the road skirted, and disappeared over the 

 edge. 



The melange sorted itself, and after philosophically 

 picking sundry bits of the landscape off his clothes the 

 yamschik helped to disentangle the tangle of our kit. 

 Only one Tatar driver seemed the worse for the hoidc- 



