654 
PASS OF SAGANLOO. 
to the south, we now and then caught a glance of the glittering 
windings of the Aras. But I had hardly enjoyed this expanded 
scene twenty minutes, when it was changed at once by suddenly 
finding myself entering as it were into the very rocky heart of 
a mountain, and where we soon became engulfed in the most ex¬ 
traordinary stony labyrinths ; sometimes wandering amidst succes¬ 
sions of enormous shadowy chasms, then diverging off into higher, 
or deepening defiles ; some lost under beetling cliffs in almost 
total darkness, and others seeming so precipitous that nothing 
heavier than an eagle’s wing could ever reach their acclivities. 
So I might have thought, had I not been amongst the escalades 
of the great Courdistan, and seen them made the passages of 
every day. But the extreme sterile rudeness of the banditti 
scenery I found here, could not be exceeded any where. The 
long silent solitudes, and the “ rocky precipitations,” so often 
at hand to offer quick dispatch for the lurking murderer, seem¬ 
ing to me much apter places for the perpetration of dreadful 
deeds, than the luxuriantly wooded part of the pass we had just 
left, and which possessed so much worse a character. Our 
horses carried us down this sinuous and rugged path at so fast 
a rate, that in less than two hours we reached the bottom with 
only two of our musketeers in party, the rest not having been 
able to keep up with us; and I must say for these, I never saw 
pedestrians hold out like them. 
When we reached the brink of a vast naked ravine, and looked 
down the cliffs from a point whence I was told our purposed 
menzil could be seen, I beheld a yet more perfect picture for 
Salvator Rosa than any of the former, wild and stupendous as 
they were. An immense savage rock rose from the bottom of 
this great mountain-chasm, standing in frowning solitary gran- 
