August 26.—Some distance below the hut the stream which we had followed is joined by a tributary coming from the east; the two branches of the fork collect a number of smaller affluents which have their sources near the summit of the chain. In continuing our course next morning up the more westerly of these branches, we were rapidly transported to the more open landscapes of the higher slopes, and made our way almost in a direct line for the pass, circling the outworks of the principal ridge. Filmy white clouds were suspended from the pine woods above us, when at a quarter-past seven we again took to the road; but for five hours the forest trees remained with us and increased rather than diminished in size. In one place it was a lime of unusual proportions rearing a maze of branches from a quadruple trunk; at another we stood in wonder before a gigantic beech which measured 17 feet 6 inches round the base. The undergrowth was supplied by laurel and holly, and cascades leapt from the rocks. The reader may see our road as it wound through this sylvan scenery (Fig. [8]), but he must allow his imagination to supply the inherent deficiencies of photographic methods. The rare inhabitants of these solitudes are of Georgian race and wear the dress of Georgia (Fig. [9]), but their straggling tenements are few and far between.
Fig. 9
Above the forest the groves of fir, higher still the grassy slopes and naked crags—such is the familiar order of mountain scenery as you slowly rise to the spine of a range. The two last features became apparent at the sixty-sixth verst-stone, or some twelve and a half miles from the hut. A profusion of wild raspberries were growing on the mossy banks and provided us with a delicious meal. We remarked the sharpness of the summits of the ridge above us and read the number of the seventy-second verst. The pass is just above this lofty standpoint, and we left the carriage to reach it by a short cut. We arrived there after a brief climb to find a fresh breeze blowing and all the wide belt of mountain at our feet.
I doubt whether there exists in the nearer Asia a standpoint which commands a prospect at once so grand and so instructive as that which is unfolded from the summit of the Zikar Pass (Zikarski Perival; altitude by my Hicks mountain aneroid, 7164 feet; Russian survey, 7104 feet). With its double front towards north and south and the contrasting features of the dual landscape, it may be said to overlook two worlds. On the north the view ranges across the broad belt of wooded mountains, which culminate in this ridge, to the gigantic barrier of the Caucasus of which the peaks are distant some ninety to a hundred miles (Fig. [10]). Invisible in the hollow lies the plain of the Rion; the crests before you, boldly vaulted and clad with forest to the very summits, sweep away to a dim horizon of grey mist; above that uncertain background the snows and glaciers of Caucasus appear suspended in the air among the clouds. Dense vapour shrouds the scene, and above the flashes of the snow a long bank of white cloud spreads fanwise up the sky.
Fig. 10. View North from the Zikar Pass.
But turn to the south—the forms and texture of the earth’s surface, the lights and shadows falling through a rarer atmosphere from lightly floating filaments of cloud, are those of a new world (Fig. [11]). The pine wood still struggles down the hillside, and gathers from the blighted trunks around you to clothe the first valleys of the southern watershed. But the view will no longer close with successive walls of mountain; the road ceases winding up the slopes of successive outworks; every vertical line, each deep vaulting relaxes and disappears. The highest plains of the tableland attain about the same elevation as the pass upon which you stand; all the outlines in the distance are horizontal, all the shapes shallow-vaulted and convex. If you follow the long-drawn profiles of the loftier masses, it is the form of a cone that breaks the sky-line, and never that of a peak. The colours are lightly washed ochres and madders; the surface of the volcanic soil is bare of all vegetation; the shadows lie transparent and thin. Such was our first view of Armenia and such the impression which our later travel confirmed.
Fig. 11. View South from the Zikar Pass.