Mount Caucasus

“ No man has ever reached half the height of Mount Caucasus: passing on our way through the districts of Dághistán we saw its top wrapped in clouds. But we shall now return to the description of our journey.
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The kent of Kokchaí (the blue river) is a great place with a Kelenter and Mihmándár, seven hundred houses with gardens. The inhabitants are Sunnís, who pay tribute to Sháh Ismail for permission to wear beards. We continued our journey through fields to the north, for seven hours, and reached the kent Aksú, on the territory of Shamákhí, of one thousand houses, a mosque, khán and bath. ”

“ The birthplace, or the primitive station, of the race of men who peopled Europe and Western Asia, is supposed to have been Mount Caucasus. From this conjecture, Europeans and many Asiatic nations, and even some Africans, have received the new designation of Caucasians. The nations of Eastern Asia are imagined, in like manner, to originate in the neighbourhood of Mount Altaï, and they are named after the Mongolians, who inhabit the highest region in that vast chain of hills. The African negroes are derived from the southern face of the chain of Mount Atlas. ”

“ A wonderful mountain railway now reaches to the summit, most of the line being through tunnels. Jungfrau is 13,670 feet high.
6. Mount Elburz is one of the loftiest and most impressive of all the Caucasian mountains. It is an extinct volcano with two peaks, the western peak 18,470 feet above sea-level, and the other 18,347 feet. It is covered with glaciers, and constitutes a watershed which divides Asia from Europe. The Caucasus gave its name to that great branch of the human race that has ruled the world for many generations. ”

“ The most striking natural feature of this region is the great chain of the Caucasus, the most stupendous mountain mass of Western Eurasia. It strikes from north-west to south-east right across the country like a huge frowning wall, and in this respect resembles the Pyrenees, though its peaks are vastly higher and much of it is crowned with perpetual snow. So formidable and complete is this great natural barrier that no railway crosses it, and only two main roads have been constructed over its passes. ”

“ Where a broad, complex mountain system contracts to narrow compass, or is cut by deep reentrant valleys leading up to a single pass, the transmontane route here made by nature assumes great historical importance. The double chain of the mighty Caucasus, from 120 to 150 miles wide and 750 miles long, stretches an almost insuperable barrier between the Black Sea and the Caspian. ”

“ I have been over many thousands of miles of Russia afoot. The happiest times were in the Caucasus, by the Gorge of Dariel road, over the Cross Pass, or by the Rion valley over Mamison, or on the Caucasian shore of the Black Sea. When it is too hot to live in a house in a town, it is heaven on the mountains. Since the War, and the Revolution, the Caucasus has, unfortunately, become much more dangerous for travelers of all kinds. The tribes are warlike, and have been badly treated by Bolsheviks and Europeans in general. ”

“ And they knew that they were come to Caucasus, at the end of all the earth: Caucasus the highest of all mountains, the father of the rivers of the East. On his peak lies chained the Titan, while a vulture tears his heart; and at his feet are piled dark forests round the magic Colchian land.
And they rowed three days to the eastward, while Caucasus rose higher hour by hour, till they saw the dark stream of Phasis rushing headlong to the sea, and, shining above the tree tops, the golden roofs of King Aietes, the child of the Sun. ”

“ And besides the horror that attached to mountain scenes in general, we must remember that Caucasus was the very type of all that was most remote, barbarous, inhospitable. It was a place to which no civilised man could ever bear to go ”

“ Then, the Caucasus, like many mountain ranges of Asia, stretches in a straight line from the peninsula of Taman to the peninsula of Apsheron, famous for its abundance of petroleum.
The Caucasus is a plication-formed mountain range composed of folded crystalline and sedimentary rock of varying ages. Along huge ravines, the entire southern part of the range has sunk down, so that the highest crystalline central zone of the range declines directly and very steeply toward the south. The highest Caucasus peaks are old extinct volcanoes, set over the basic mountains ”

“ Eastern Part.—In this sub-section, which stretches from Kasbek and the Darial gorge eastwards to the Baba-dagh in 48° 25′ E., a distance of 230 m., the Caucasus attains its greatest breadth. For the whole of that distance the main range keeps at an average elevation of 10,000 ft., though the peaks in many instances tower up 2000 to nearly 5000 ft. higher, the altitudes increasing towards the east. As the main range approaches the Caspian its granite core gradually disappears, giving place to Palaeozoic schists, which spread down both the northern and the southern slopes. ”

“ The range of the Caucasus, like that of the Pyrenees, maintains for considerable distances a high average elevation, and is not cleft by deep trenches, forming natural passes across the range, such as are common in the Alps. ”

“ The geological interest in the Caucasus Mountains is due to the fact that they rise abruptly from two flat plains, similar to our western prairies, known as steppes, and are unique because of the simplicity of their structure, the regularity of their outlines, the steepness of the declivities, and the narrowness of the range. It is not split up, as other great mountain chains are, into secondary and parallel ranges, and has no buttresses running at right angles, nor outlying peaks. ”

“ Geographically, the Caucasus forms a boundary-line between South-eastern Europe and Western Asia, but it is not simply a geographical boundary, marked on the map with a red line and having no other existence: it is a huge natural barrier seven hundred miles in length and ten thousand feet in average height, across which, in the course of unnumbered centuries, man has never been able to find more than two practicable passes, the Gorge of Dariel and the Iron Gate of Derbend. ”

“ The plains of Northern Caucasia, which include most of the provinces of Kubañ and Terek and of the government of Stavropol, slope gently downwards from the foot of the Caucasus range towards the Kuma-Manych depression. It is only in their centre that they reach altitudes of as much as 2000–2500 ft. ”

“ When she was travelling to the Caucasus, it seemed that she would find here on the first day a cosy nook by the sea, a snug little garden with shade, with birds, with little brooks, where she could grow flowers and vegetables, rear ducks and hens, entertain her neighbours, doctor poor peasants and distribute little books amongst them. It had turned out that the Caucasus was nothing but bare mountains, forests, and huge valleys, where it took a long time and a great deal of effort to find anything and settle down ”

“ The Caucasus is suited for general travelers, for lovers of the picturesque, whether or not they are painters, as well as for peak-hunters. If above its snow level its granite crests, its icy hollows, its hanging glaciers, and fluted snow slopes impress the intruder with a sublimity beyond that of the Alps, its high valleys have attractions for men of the most various pursuits and hobbies. The physical geographer will find materials for a contrast between the features of the Caucasus and those of better-known ranges. ”

“ Caucasus—Character of the Tribes—Circassian Slave Trade—Birth of Schamyl—Personal Appearance—Form of Government—His Army and Body-Guard—Financial Rule—Struggles with Russia—Personal Habits—Legend—Circassian Women in Battle—Escape from the Russians.
The valleys of the Caucasus afford abundance of detached rocks and overhanging cliffs, bathed by the foaming mountain torrents. On these or other almost inaccessible spots, are perched, like eagles’ nests, the aouls or villages of the natives. ”

“ One of the most remarkable characteristics of the Caucasus is that, while it has acted as a barrier between the north and the south, stopping and turning aside the movements of population, it has also preserved within its sheltered recesses fragments of the different peoples who from time to time have passed by it, or who have been driven by conquest into it from the lower country. ”

“ On the side towards the West of this Sea the Caucasus runs along by it, which is of all mountain-ranges both the greatest in extent and the loftiest: and the Caucasus has many various races of men dwelling in it, living for the most part on the wild produce of the forests ”

“ All the great invaders of the prehistoric period smote the Caucasus with their impotent swords, but never passed beyond; and the first Europeans to find their way through the rocky labyrinths were Greek and Genoese traders, who crawled through the cañons on foot in the Middle Ages in search of customers. Much was risked for gold and glory in man’s struggle with nature that lasted many centuries here, and it was not until the territory was added to the Russian Empire early in the nineteenth century that the Caucasus became passable. ”

“ The snow-clad peaks of the main Caucasus, descending by short steep slopes, fringe the valley on the north-east; while a huge wall, much lower, and having the characters of a border-ridge of the Armenian plateau, bounds the valley on the south-west. [1] The floor of the valley gently slopes from 1200 feet at Tiflis to 500 feet in its middle, and to 85 feet below the level of the ocean on the Caspian shore; but a plateau ranging from 2000 to 3000 feet in height, very fertile along the Atazan, a left-hand tributary of the Kura, stretches along the southern hillfoots of the main ridge. ”

“ At Utsera it was raining on the Friday morning. At the next village, Glola, a thousand feet higher, the rain was changed for sleet. The road ascends through a fir wood said to be the grandest in the Caucasus; the pines are as broad-trunked as some of our famous oaks, and they rise straight as a die to almost incredible height. Their ancient hoariness and greyness add to their majestic appearance. ”

“ Still the Caucasus boasts of more majestic woods and a more luxuriant flora than the Alps; and when to its scenery is added the coloring lent it by the rising and the setting sun, there can be no higher beauty in nature anywhere. Especially during the summer months travellers have noted a remarkable purity of atmosphere in these mountains, and represent them as being full of light a considerable time before the appearing of the sun on the horizon ”

“ The combined valleys of the Rion and the Kura, which intervene between the Caucasus and the Armenian highlands, and stretch their axes north-west and south-east respectively, embrace the most populous and most fertile parts of Caucasia. They correspond roughly with the governments of Kutais, Tiflis, Elisavetpol and Baku, and have a population of nearly 3,650,000. ”

“ The contrary is the case in the Caucasus. From the fortress of Anapa on the Black Sea, all along to the Caspian, the northern slope presents only immense inclined plains, rising in terraces to a height of 3,000 or 4,000 yards above the sea level. These plains, rent on all directions by deep and narrow valleys and vertical clefts, often form real steppes, and possess on their loftiest heights rich pastures, where the inhabitants, secure from all attack, find fresh grass for their cattle in the sultriest days of summer. ”

“ The consideration that an open environment makes for uniformity, secluded upland valleys for diversity, seems greatly to favour the latter assumption, which is further strengthened by the now established fact that, although there are few traces of the Palaeolithic epoch, the Caucasus was somewhat thickly inhabited in the New Stone Age. ”

“ Apparently each of these oncoming waves of barbaric humanity, bursting through the great gateway, must have left behind some few remnants of their volume, for nowhere in the world, in so limited an area, is there such a diversity and mixture of peoples. In the words of one writer, who speaks with authority on this region, the Caucasus is "an ethnological museum where the invaders of Europe, as they traveled westward to be manufactured into nations, left behind samples of themselves in their raw condition." ”

“ But, although I avoided fever myself, and believe that with these precautions a foreigner might well pass some time in the Caucasus and escape, more especially if he went in late autumn and returned by the end of March, I have no wish to describe the Caucasus, more especially the Black Sea coast and the neighbourhood of Ekaterinodar and the Kuban, as anything but a nest of fever. Where the vegetation is as rank, and marshes so frequent and of such extent as those round Poti and Lenkoran on the Caspian, the summer time is a dangerous time for even the most prudent. ”

“ From Anapa to Gagra, along the shores of the Black Sea, we observe a secondary chain composed of schistous mountains, seldom exceeding 1000 yards in height. But the nature of their soil, and of their rocks, would be enough to render them almost impracticable for European armies, even were they not covered with impenetrable forests. The inhabitants of this region, who are called Tcherkesses or Circassians, by the Russians, are entirely independent, and constitute one of the most warlike peoples of the Caucasus. ”