USUMLAR. 
163 
sometimes trembling, lest any one of them should make a false 
step. Nothing could then save the poor animal from falling 
over the cliff, and precipitating those immediately behind him 
to the same fate -— inevitable destruction. At one of these 
points, the chasm was several hundred feet beneath ; and, as I 
said before, every fatiguing step increased its depth and terrors. 
After incredible toil, we at last gained the top of the mountain, 
and saw winter before us. A vast plain stretched along the 
summit, bounded on one side by another pile of mountains, 
overtopping that we had just surmounted. They are called the 
Algat range; and, with the whole country around them, from 
its elevation, were covered with snow : a very different picture 
from the green and smiling valleys I had so recently left. A 
short ride, through a piercing cold wind, brought us in good 
time to Usumlar, our halting-place for the night. We had tra¬ 
velled thirty-five wersts, this day. 
Usumlar was once a town of consequence, but is now a mere 
village, or rather a combination of wretched huts; whose low 
mud-walls, and black entrances, scarcely a yard above the surface 
of the ground, give the whole more the appearance of a rabbit- 
warren, than of habitations for men. Most of the villages I had 
seen, since leaving the Terek, have more or less of the like 
semblance, according to the degree of civilisation and industry 
of the occupiers. The vestiges of Usumlar’s better days consist, 
chiefly, of the shattered walls of a large church, formerly the 
seat of a bishop. Its architecture bears some similitude to the 
remains of the like sacred edifices in Tiflis ; indeed, there is a 
general resemblance amongst all this class of ruins, on the 
southern side of the great chain of the Caucasus. The most 
considerable difference that struck me, between the Usumlar 
y 2 
