IXUNDATIONS. 19 



wliicli lias been apparently accepted by geographers, to 

 tlie exclusion of several more or less unpronounceable 

 native titles,^ is, like Elbruz, of Russian origin. A 

 certain Prince Kazbek, or Kasibeg, who lived in the 

 village of St. Stephen (the present Kazbek), was one of 

 the first of the mountaineers to perceive that his best 

 policy was to recognise a fait accompli, to embrace Chris- 

 tianity, and to acquiesce in Russian supremacy. He 

 received his reward ; the conquerors have given him im- 

 mortality, by conferring his name iipon the village in which 

 he lived, and upon the great mountain by which it is 

 overhung. 



Even with the Russians — who, as a race, have no feeling 

 for mountains, and regard them more as barely tolerable 

 eccentricities than as admirable beauties of nature — Kaz- 

 bek has, during the last twenty years, excited a good deal 

 of attention. The creation of an ice-barrier across the 

 torrent issuing from the great glacier of Devdorak, on the 

 north-eastern flank of the mountain, has from time to 

 time caused calamities wrongly attributed by the Russians 

 to avalanches. On our arrival in the Caucasian provinces, 

 the first thing we were told was, ' Oh, you are just in 

 time to see the great avalanche from Kazbek.' Some 

 years ago the Pariel road was swept away, and a similar 

 catastrophe was considered probable during the comino- 

 summer. Everyone in Tiflis was talking of it, but 

 happily it never came off, and we learnt from Mons. 

 Khatissian that some, at least, of the historical ava- 

 lanches are apocryphal. The record of one (in 1842) is ^ 

 preserved in the ofiicial archives at Tiflis, where the 

 reports of the officers stationed at the Dariel fortress, and 

 commissioned by the then Viceroy to ascertain the immi- 



* Mquiiivari is the best known. 



