PAXOKAMA OF THE CAUCASUS. 475 



dour, of the glorious vision. To describe it in all its beauty 

 would be impossible, and, even were it otherwise, fear of 

 disappointing the next traveller, who, having read these 

 pages, may follow the same path, would make me hesitate 

 in the attempt. In the first place, few can hope to be 

 favoured with such a day ; in the second, the scene will 

 not produce in every traveller the same feelings that it 

 did in us, to whom every summit and glacier in the long 

 snowy ridge were full of memories. The ordinary observer, 

 unused to the scale of great mountain scenery, will see 

 nothing but curious crags in the huge cliffs of TJschba, 

 and will pass over without a second glance the strips of 

 glistening silver which seam the mountain- wall : we, 

 who recognised in one of them the frozen cascade above 

 Adisch, in another the glacier above Grlola, from the ice- 

 fall of which we had retreated in desj^air, lingered to take 

 a long and affectionate farewell of old friends seen beyond 

 hope once more. Among the numerous Russian officers 

 who had passed this way with whom we conversed, we 

 did not find one who seemed aware that the great moun- 

 tains were visible from the pass, and travellers like 

 them, incapable of interpreting rightly the images pre- 

 sented to their eyes, will perhaps accuse us of making an 

 absurd fuss over a distant horizon of snow and a few jagged 

 rocks, which seem to them rather to spoil the sweep of 

 the skyline. 



We paid comparatively little attention, at the time, to 

 the view looking back into the Turkish territory, but it must 

 not be left wholly unnoticed. There, beyond the wooded and 

 broken spurs of the chain on which we stood, the highlands 

 of the province of Kars, a succession of roinided hills, vdth 

 a few patches of snow still lingering on their summits, 

 stretched away to the horizon. 



A long ride still lay before us — our horsemen urged us 



