122 SAVAGE SVANETIA. 



nificance of Betclio, it looked to me a type of 

 the country whose loveliness is almost beyond 

 compare, while its denizens are incomparably 

 the most destitute of culture amono-st men. 

 The Russian ao;ronome, whom I afterwards 

 met in Betcho, informed me that the whole 

 of the cone of Ushtba is composed of granite 

 and granolite. 



But bsautiful as Ushtba is in the glory of 

 an autumn sunset, it was not a prince of 

 mountains that we sou^-ht at Betcho, but a 

 prince of mountaineers, whose tall form we 

 now discerned in the distance, the centre of 

 as motley a group of retainers as ever thronged 

 around their chief. 



The prince's house was a trifle better than 

 the rest in Betcho, a one- storied wooden 

 building with a balcony round it, and here 

 the prince and a kind of deputy-governor 

 lived together, and day and night a mob of 

 rough retainers thronged in the balcony or 



