Sometimes they looked back and down on the vicinity of a previous camp with such a feeling of height gained that they were elated. And again a day passed with hardly any perceptible accomplishment. When, therefore, they finally actually stood on the summit, their delight was boundless. They shouted and jumped and capered on the lonely crest as though they had taken leave of their senses. One would have supposed that their journey was finished and all the hard work was done. To the casual observer, though, there would have seemed to be still something left.
The boys were standing on old, hardened snow that had undoubtedly been in place for many years, and that was pierced only occasionally by rocks so gray as to be hardly distinguishable from the dingy snow itself.
Back of them, by the route on which they had come through Daghestan, the immediate slopes were densely covered with snow, but beyond, only the high elevations were clothed in their first white robe of early fall. The prospect that way was Arctic and forbidding.
In front of them, how different! At their feet,—more than two miles of perpendicular descent below them,—lay the great valley of Georgia. It was crossed and marked by scores of thread-like, glistening lines, the streams and canals that carried water over its fields and meadows. All was glowing and smiling in the tints of summer, where even autumn, much less winter, had not yet approached.
In the checkerboard of cultivated country there were squares of dark, rich green that indicated orange groves, and other divisions of ashy green that proclaimed orchards of olive trees. It was a glorious and beautiful scene, and was like a fairy transformation after the barren ranges and desolate slopes of Daghestan.
Beyond that brilliant valley, as though to remind the beholder that all to the south was not soft and warm, towered the snow-capped mountains of Armenia. In the west, across a jumble of mountains that rose at the upper end of the Georgian valley, the boys saw a hazy line which they were sure must be the Black Sea, and their hearts throbbed faster as they looked.
The travelers were viewing the wonderful panorama from a height of fully twelve thousand feet, and only in the western portions of the range were points that were higher. To the east the range dropped much lower, and when the boys turned that way they saw, off on the dim horizon, a level line that was, without doubt, the Caspian.
“Gee! Sid,” exclaimed Raymond as they gazed in wonder, “I thought I had been on mountains before, but this beats everything.”
“And such a difference!—the dead of winter on one side, and the middle of summer on the other.”
“No wonder we were cold back there,” said Raymond, as he looked over the snowy wastes through which they had passed. “But, jiminy, won’t I be glad to get down on that side!” And he turned with longing to the warmth and beauty of the south.