286 CAUCASIAN GLACIEES AND FORESTS. 



of the day. Our guides seemed confident in their knowledge 

 of the right direction through this wilderness, and tramped 

 on with praiseworthy perseverance, diverting the tedium of 

 the march, sometimes by raising awild monotonous chaunt,* 

 led by one man, with a refrain taken up in succession by 

 his companions — sometimes by excursions in quest of 

 the stalks of a huge umbelliferous plant, for which their 

 appetite seemed insatiable. Each man must have cut and 

 peeled for himself several pounds of this juicy but tasteless 

 vegetable food in the course of the day. When it became 

 necessary to cross the river, the water was too deep and 

 violent to be forded, but a young tree was soon felled, and 

 laid across to enable us to pass. The valley, the configura- 

 tion of which is most incorrectly represented in the Five 

 Yerst Map, now broadened out, and a cirque crowned by 

 snowy peaks and some small glaciers opened on the right. 

 A densely- wooded spur projected from the main chain, 

 turning the course of the valley we were following more 

 directly south, and separating it from the glen of the 

 Scena. The scenery here is probably very striking in fine 

 weather. We passed a hunter's lair sheltered under a 

 bank, and soon afterwards noticed the ruins of a tower 

 rising out of the dense forest, and afibrding a proof that 

 these solitudes have not always been so deserted as they are 

 now. On our right, deep channels were cut through the 

 friable soil by the glacier-streams, the passage of which 

 cost us a good deal of time and trouble. We had now 

 attained a height of from 500 to 800 feet above the river, 

 and a bend in its course enabled us to look down to its 

 junction with the Scena, the point fixed on as the probable 

 limit of our day's walk. The slopes we were traversing 



* Herr Eadde has been at the pains to collect and translate many of these 

 songs, which seem to possess more meaning and merit than would be imagined 

 by a person hearing, for the first time, the succession of gutturals and uncouth 

 exclamations of which thev consist. 



