ESSENTUKY. 387 



railway communication with Central Eussia, but also tlie 

 gambling-tables, wbicli are apparently necessary, as a men- 

 tal fillip, to the complete success of all water-cures. The 

 weather during our stay was continuously cloudless ; night 

 and morning the serrated array of the Caucasus invited us 

 to return into its recesses. Patigorsk, owing to its position 

 on a southern slope, is decidedly a hot place ; and the 

 constant sunshine drove many of the invalids and all the 

 visitors to Kislovodsk, where a short course of the waters 

 is generally prescribed after the sulphur-springs have had 

 their effect. Dr. Smirnov proposed that we should make a 

 day's excursion to Kislovodsk, a suggestion we were glad 

 to adopt, more especially as all trouble was taken off our 

 hands by the kind loan of the doctor's open carriage. 

 Moore was, unfortunately, too unwell to accompany us ; 

 but Tucker and I set out, at 5 a.m. on the morning of 

 the 7th, with four horses harnessed abreast, in the usual 

 Russian fashion. 



The road (I speak as a Russian) is simply a portion of 

 the steppe where carriages ordinarily pass. It leads 

 through a military cantonment, a row of tidy cottages 

 surrounded by huge sunflowers, and then strikes across 

 the plain in a south-westerly direction towards a green 

 oasis already visible in the distance. On the north the 

 symmetrical form of Beschtau is more than usually con- 

 spicuous ; its loftiest summit is surrounded by four minor 

 ones, so that, from every point of view, the mountain bears 

 the same appearance, and may be compared to a Russian 

 church with its four small cupolas clustering round the 

 central dome. In the opposite direction, the snowy heads 

 of Elbruz are constantly in sight, over the lower ridges 

 that bound the plain on the south. It is seventeen versts 

 from Patigorsk to Essentuky, formerly a frontier-jiost, 

 then a Cossack ' stanitza,' and now a bathing-place. The 



c c 2 



