MOUNTAIN TRACTS. 
459 
night, after having received all the quadrupeds of the community. 
Horses are not a very common possession amongst them ; asses 
and oxen performing all the purposes of agriculture, and trans¬ 
porting loads besides. The latter, like mules, or baggage-horses, 
never have their pack-saddles taken from their backs either day 
or night. 
Dec. 14.—The village of Kunamassi stands in a small dell 
of the great valley of the two rivers, and commands a little 
mountain-stream that falls into the Kara-Choran. We left it 
at eight o’clock this morning, keeping along the river’s bank 
to the north-east for rather more than an hour; then changing 
our course to the north-west, we soon lost sight of our beautiful 
open vale, having got into one that was excessively narrow and 
sinuous, though fertile like the other, and cultivated high up its 
hilly slopes with vineyards, and little copses of the dwarf oak. 
But this pretty scenery was soon displaced by something more 
wild and savage, for our road suddenly wound up the side of an 
almost perpendicular mountain, presenting a tremendous unin¬ 
terrupted cliff above, and a black and frightful chasm below, 
from the bottom of which, as we proceeded in our ascent, we 
heard the hollow echoes of the roaring Kara-Choran. The 
dangers of the precipice on our left were increased by the ex¬ 
treme narrowness of the path, along which the wall of the 
mountain pressed us on our right. Only a single animal could 
pass on at a time, and the apprehension which had seized me 
under similar circumstances on the Caucasus, here assailed me 
again, of being met by other travellers before we could gain 
a broader, and therefore securer road. Our cavalcade had ac¬ 
complished about a mile and a half of this perilous way, when 
the view of a valley below suddenly burst upon us, so perfectly 
3 n 2 
