CAUCASIAX SHEPHERDS. 243 



CHAPTEE IX. 



THE GLACIERS AlfD FOEESTS OP THE CEXTEAL CAUCASUS. 



Caucasian Shepherds — A Lovely Alp — Sheep on the Glacier — A New Pass 

 — A Snow Wall — A Kough Glen — The Karagam Glacier — Bivonac in the 

 Forest — An Icefall — A Struggle and a Victory — The Upper Snowfields 

 —The Watershed at last— Check— A Useful Gully— An Uneasy Night 

 — Glola again — Pantomime — Gebi — Curious Villagers — A Bargain for 

 Porters — Azalea Thickets — The Source of the Eion — Rank Herbage 

 — Camp on the Zenes-Squali — A Low Pass — Swamps and Jungles 

 — Path-finding — The Glen of the Scena — Wide Pasturages — The Naksagar 

 Pass. 



July loth. — We made a late supper, or early breakfast, 

 soon after midniglit, and having insisted on tlie peasant 

 wlio was to accompany us sleeping in the same house, 

 found no difficulty in starting at the hour appointed. 

 Before separating from Paul, we told him to explain fully 

 to our guide the part we expected him to perform, and 

 the pay we should give him if he fulfilled it to our satis- 

 faction. This was a necessary precaution, as we had no 

 naeans, except signs, of communicating with our companion, 

 Avho only knew the Georgian dialect commonly spoken on 

 the south side of the chain. We climbed the hillside 

 immediately behind Chiora, soon leaving below us the 

 cultivated fields, and finding ourselves on grass-covered 

 slopes, adorned with clusters of trees in the manner of an 

 English park. Shepherds' fires shone here and there 

 through the darkness, and our guide took us round in 

 order to pass near some of his friends, who were camping- 

 out with their flocks. The peasants of the Caucasus do 

 not take nearly so much pains as those of the Alps to 



