EN ROUTE FOR DAGHESTAN. 235 



V, 



distant horizon, moved mechanically onwards as we 

 passed them, their plumed howdah sticks nodding 

 in time to that slow soft stride, which from its 

 even regularity always impressed me with an 

 idea of perpetual motion. Several times, too, 

 towards evening we came upon large camps near 

 a pool of water, where sonic hundreds of camels 

 were resting, their huge forms making, as they 

 knelt in line, a four-sided fort, within the walls 

 .of which were stored the bales they had brought 

 out of the distant East. Amongst these large 

 camps I noticed a few of those white dromedaries 

 which travellers tell us are so much prized for 

 their speed in the East. Save for these camel 

 caravans, of which we met two or three a day, 

 all bound for Tiflis, a few minor trains of don- 

 keys laden with charcoal, or slow-going fourgons 

 tilled with the carpets of Shusha and Shemakha, 

 our iirst two days' journey was most unin- 

 teresting. Dead bare steppe and barren bleak 

 hillside, with nothing more inspiriting than an 

 apparently deserted Tartar cemetery to break the 

 monotony, with its tall unhewn headstones of 

 white rock. Mere and there, as the evening grew 

 into night, the road wound through low hills of 

 such a withered and blaste 1 l<x>k that you felt 

 that the memorial stones, which you passed from 

 time to time in dark silent places, were sufficiently 

 suggestive of murder and evil deeds without 



