476 TRANSCAUCASIA. 



onwards, and we were forced reluctantly to turn away and 

 commence the descent. For some distance tlie new road 

 is cut in steep and long zigzags ; it plunges almost imme- 

 diately into a grove of noble pines and firs, with long 

 mossy streamers hanging from their branches. The track, 

 reduced to a rough bridle-path, crosses a rivulet, and makes 

 a second and deeper plunge to the bed of the Chani-Squali, 

 the course of which it follows henceforth to the Mingrelian 

 lowlands. We imagined that we had already exhausted 

 the charms of sylvan scenery, but the forest in which we 

 now found ourselves surpassed in the richness and 

 variety of its foliage any we had yet seen. To enumerate 

 the trees would be not only to exhaust, but to make several 

 additions to, the list of those found in Central Europe ; 

 the beech, the elm, and the alder, which here grows to 

 an enormous size, Avere the most conspicuous. Long 

 wreaths of ivy hung from their branches, and twisted 

 round their stems, and the ground was covered with a 

 dense undergrowth of box, holly, laurel, azalea, and 

 rhododendron bushes. Long grasses and ferns, some 

 rising to the height of a man, filled the glades ; others, 

 small and delicate, grew in the crannies of the mossy 

 cliffs. The stream foamed at the bottom of the deep glen 

 in a succession of falls and rapids ; the path, following 

 and frequently crossing it, grew worse and worse, and 

 our horses found difficulty in picking their way along it. 

 A causeway of logs had in many places been laid upon 

 the swampy ground, and the track, poached into holes 

 between the timbers by the feet of passing animals, was 

 converted into a succession of ridges and furrows similar 

 to an American ' corderoy.' 



We wandered on for some hours through the glades 

 and thickets, halting at times to admire some exquisite 

 vista, in which the snowy peak of Tau Totonal, framed 



