162 
DANGEROUS ASCENT. 
We rode on, about a mile, upon the immediate bank, or 
rather rocky dyke, of the river, at the base of the mountain, 
before the road turned to its ascent; but when it did, the pro¬ 
spect was terrible. We saw one continued narrow, tortuous line, 
twisting amongst naked and broken cliffs, close to a nearly per¬ 
pendicular precipice, at the bottom of which flowed the deep and 
rapid waters of the Bambek, black with the shadow of the moun¬ 
tain before us. When we began the ascent, we found it even 
more arduous than it seemed; the road being of the solid rock, 
craggy and broken, and often becoming so exceedingly narrowed 
by the effects of winter-fractures, that a straw’s breadth hardly 
divided the foot from the edge of the most horrible abyss I had 
ever seen. As we mounted steep after steep, of course this 
abyss deepened, showing a succession of precipices, one over the 
other, till we no longer heard the river at their base. Those in 
my party, who were acquainted with the country, declared it as 
desperate a passage as any in the Caucasus. Indeed, it was a 
subject of admiration, no less than of anxiety, in observing the 
difficulties, to watch the persevering steadiness with which they 
were breasted and overcome. The men could not help, at times, 
showing fatigue, but never apprehension. And the Cossack 
horses, who were charged with the baggage, scrambled up the 
dangerous zig-zags, with a labour and a care, so like the calcu¬ 
lation of intellect, that I could not but, again and again, marvel 
at such appearances of reason, in mere instinct. It is, perhaps, 
only in expeditions like the present, that we learn the full value 
of these noble animals. And, as I now and then gained a 
higher angle of the road, and gazed down upon them, working 
so zealously and perilously in my service, I could not help 
