its mixed population displays. The inn is highly primitive; but as we had arranged to start next day with the dawn, that was neither here nor there; the mountain fever had seized us on finding ourselves at last under the shadow of this mysterious chain, and made us reckless of discomforts. At five next morning the sky was clear and bright, and, to our amazement, a snow-peak was looking in at the window, seeming to hang over the town. We were in the steppe, outside the mountains altogether, and here was an icy pinnacle, soaring into the air 14,000 feet above us, no farther off than Pilatus looks from Luzern. It was Kazbek, the mountain where Prometheus hung in chains. Hither the ocean nymphs came to console him; over this desert to the north Io wandered, driven by the gadfly of Hera.

Up to this point we had managed to get on pretty well in hotels, railways, and steamers with German and French and a few words of Russian. Now, however, that it became necessary to take to the road, and enter upon those interminable wranglings with postmasters at post stations which every preceding traveller has described in such repulsive colours, the real difficulties of the way seemed to begin. We therefore thought ourselves fortunate in falling in with two Russian ladies bound for Tiflis, whose acquaintance we made in the train, and who, after a preliminary skirmish about English sympathy with Turkish cruelties, had proposed we should make up a party to hire a vehicle to carry us over the 126 miles of road to the southern capital. Afterwards they

picked up, rather to our disgust, a fifth partner, a Circassian gentleman, also making for Tiflis. We had of course conceived of a Tcherkess as a gigantic warrior, armed to the teeth with helmet and shield and the unerring rifle, hating the Russian intruder, and ready to die for Islam. This Circassian, however, turned out to be an advocate practising at Stavropol, and graduate of the university of Moscow a short, swarthy man, who was, I believe, a Mohammedan, but never turned to Mecca all the time we were with him, and in other ways shewed small regard for the precepts of the Prophet. Our vehicle went by the name of an omnibus, but was what we should call a covered waggonette, with a leather roof and leather curtains made to draw round the sides, no useless protection against the dust and sun. It held four, or, at a pinch, six, inside, and one outside beside the driver and conductor, and seems to be the kind of carriage most used by travellers of the richer sort on this frequented piece of road. We made our bargain with the conductor for the whole way, but changed horses and driver at each post station. There are in all eleven stations on the road, at intervals of from eight to sixteen miles, better supplied with horses, and altogether better appointed, than probably anywhere else in Russia, as is natural when one considers the importance of the route, and the great number of military and civil officials who are constantly traversing it. These stations, however, are not necessarily or properly inns. At most of them it is a mere chance if you find anything to eat beyond

bread, and possibly eggs. The room or rooms in which the traveller halts while horses are being changed contains no furniture, except a table, two wooden chairs, and either an ancient sofa or two wooden frames-they cannot be called bedsteads-on which a luxurious traveller may lay his mattress and pillows, if he can spare the time for sleep, and does not mind being disturbed by the irruptions of other wayfarers at all hours during the night. In point of fact, few travellers do stop. The rule in Russia is to go straight ahead, by night as well as by day, eating at odd times, and dozing in your carriage when you can. One soon gets accustomed to that way of life, fresh air and excitement keeping any one who is in good health right enough so long as the journey lasts. The drawback is that you may happen to be uncontrollably drowsy just when you are passing through the finest bit of scenery.

Vladikavkaz lies sufficiently clear of the mountains to enjoy a noble view, looking westward along their northern slope, which is capped by several snowy summits; among them, and almost farthest to the west, the magnificent Dykhtau (16,925 feet). All this, however, is soon lost, for the road runs straight south into the hills, keeping the bottom of the valley, and in eight or nine miles enters a superb gorge among the limestone mountains which here, as in the Alps, form the outer heights of the chain. Clothed, wherever there is room for a root to hold, with the richest deciduous wood, they rise in wonderful precipices 5000 or 6000 feet above the valley, ledge

over ledge, and crag above crag, while at the bottom they press the river so close that at some points the road has been cut out in the overhanging cliff face, and the streamlets from above break in spray over it. The scenery is like that of parts of the Bavarian Alps, only on a far grander scale. After a time the glen widens a little, and its character changes, for we leave the limestone, and come between mountains of slate or schist. Here the slopes are scarcely less steep, but more uniform. They rise so abruptly that one hardly understands how wood can grow on them, and are seamed by deep torrent beds, dry at this season, but shewing by the piles of stone and gravel on each side of them with what tremendous force the winter waters must descend. Behind them bare, rocky tops occasionally stand out, rising far above the region of trees, and here and there, where a lateral glen comes down, and the declivity is less abrupt, Osset villages are seen, clusters of huts more like beehives than human dwellings, with small, rude square towers, perched on eminences for refuge. against a sudden attack. The population of the valley is chiefly Osset; to the east, behind the savage ridges which guard it on that side, lies the country, first, of the mainly pagan Ingushes, and then of the Mohammedan Tchetchens, a powerful group of tribes quite distinct from the Ossets and Ingushes in blood and speech.

Hitherto the valley bottom has scarcely risen above the level of the steppe, and several of the characteristic steppe plants have held their ground, mixed with

the alpine flora of saxifrages, gentians, and so forth, which is beginning to appear.1 But now, about sixteen miles from Vladikavkaz, the valley seems suddenly to come to an end, and the track to vanish among the tremendous crags out of which the river descends in a succession of cataracts. The road crosses to its eastern bank, and mounts rapidly along a shelf cut out of the mountain-side. At the bottom of the gorge there is the furious torrent; on each side walls of granite rising (vertically, one would think, though I suppose they cannot be quite vertical) 4000 feet above it; behind are still loftier ranges of sharp, red pinnacles, broken, jagged, and terrible, their topmost summits flecked with snow, not a bush, or flower, or blade of green to relieve their bare sternness. This is the famous Dariel Pass, a scene whose grandeur is all the more striking because one comes so suddenly upon it after the exquisite beauty of the wooded limestone mountains farther down; a scene worthy of the historical associations which invest it, alone of all Caucasian glens, with an atmosphere of ancient romance. Virgil is renowned for nothing more than the singular felicity of the epithets with which he conveys a picture or a story in a single word; and the phrase, "duris cautibus horrens Caucasus," seemed so exactly to describe this spot that I was tempted to fancy he had in his mind, when he used it, some account by a Greek traveller who had wandered thus far. The mighty masses that hem in this ravine do

1 Among the commonest plants up the valley are our pretty little English ferns Cistopteris fragilis and Asplenium septentrionale.