109 



pleasing duty, the additional researches of M. Dubois having been 

 recently published, and having myself largely profited by them, in 

 the construction of a map of that empire, to invite your consider- 

 ation to his great work. 



From its diversified and varied outline, and its early historical 

 records, no region within the reach of Europeans seemed to have a 

 greater claim upon the combined efforts of geologists and historians 

 than the Caucasus, and yet of no country were we more ignorant. 

 For although travellers have, from time to time, passed over it by 

 one great road or another, from the thirteenth to the present cen- 

 tury, and though Kupffer has well described the environs of one of 

 its northern peaks Elbruz, and Eichwald has explored the coasts of 

 the Caspian, we had never had a true picture of the physical geo- 

 graphy and varied inhabitants, still less of the geological structure 

 of this chain. No one, in short, struggling with the dangers of 

 climate and uncivilized inhabitants, had so threaded these mountains 

 and defiles as to make us familiar with them*. This Herculean 

 task was undertaken by M. Dubois, and most successfully has he 

 executed it, for his work of five volumes is that of a geographer, 

 historian and geologist. The lovers of Homer, Strabo and Pliny 

 will assuredly find in it a mine of classical recollections, a correct 

 identification of ancient sites and vivid sketches of ancient customs, 

 described by Grecian and Roman writers, some of which habits pre- 

 vail even to this day. Regretting, as we must, that ti-acts formerly 

 illustrious in song, and many of them still blessed with the richest 

 gifts of nature, should, for the most part, be now tenanted by wild 

 and barbarous tribes, let us the more admire the zeal and energy with 

 which our author, surrounded by privations, has produced so clear 

 a picture of this extraordinary region. Not only does M. Dubois 

 place before us the physical features and the social condition of the 

 various tribes, from the Circassians on the north to the Georgians 

 and Armenians on the south, but he gives us geological sections, 

 maps and descriptions, and thus brings the rocks of these wild and 

 rugged tracts into a clear comparison with known European types. 



No country is more entitled to the name of metamorphic than the 

 Caucasus, for M. Dubois proves, that the oldest sedimentary rocks of 

 which it is composed, are scarcely of higher antiquity than the Lias; 

 whilst Ararat, in great part of recent volcanic origin, exhibits on its 

 flanks streams of lava, which must have flowed since the land has 

 assumed its present configuration. So modern is this mountain in 

 the records of the geologist — so venerable as the cradle of the human 

 race. 



Let us however cast a rapid glance over some of the chief results 

 of M. Dubois's researches. The central ridges of this mighty chain, 



* Of the scenery, antiquities and costumes of such parts of the Caucasus 

 as he visited, incUidiiig special ilhistrations of Ararat and the north of 

 Persia, my lamented friend Sir Robert Ker Porter brought away a rich 

 series of beautiful sketches, a few only of which have been published. Though 

 not a geologist, his faithful pencil conveys an admirable idea of the charactei' 

 of the highly inclined and metamorphic strata. 



