226 SAVAGE SVANETIA. 



bribed to help ns came with a message from 

 the chief peasant of the neighbourhood, inviting 

 us to his house. 



Thouo'h no villao-e was in sio:ht, our o-uide 

 tohl ns to pick up our things and follow him. 

 The hut was only a few hundred yards away, 

 and in another ten minutes we were entering 

 one of the thickest of the little coverts which 

 were scattered over the plain. Once inside 

 the limits of the covert, we found ourselves in 

 a good- sized village, in which trees and houses 

 kept up a perpetual struggle for the mastery, 

 and subsequent investigation taught us that 

 every covert and thicket in the plain round us 

 concealed its little group of human habitations; 

 so that though from the hill above only five 

 houses are visible in the five versts of country 

 round the river's l>rim, there are in Djuaria, 

 within two or three versts of the hill, at least one 

 hundred houses. That in which we nowfoulid 

 ourselves was a solid well-built place, belong- 



