f nature,
the granitic [main] range is rent over and over again to its base by
gorges, the watershed being transferred to the parallel chain of clay
slates ... which has followed it from the Black Sea, attaining on its
way the height of 13,400 ft. in the Laila, and limiting the great
parallel basins of the Rion, Ingur and Skenis Shali
[= Tskhenis-Tskhali]...." "At the base of the central core of the chain
spread (to the north) broad, smooth, grassy downs, the pastures of the
Turk and the Ossete.... Their ridges attain to 9000 to 10,000 ft. They
are composed of friable crystalline schists.... Beyond these schists
rises a broken wall of limestone, cleft to the base by gorges, through
which flow the mountain torrents, and capped by pale precipitous
battlements, which face the central chain at a height of 11,000 to
12,000 ft. Beyond, again, lies a broad furrow, or 'longitudinal fold,'
as geologists call it, parallel to the ridges, and then rises the last
elevation, a belt of low calcareous hills, on which, here and there
among the waves of beech forest, purple or blue with distance, a white
cliff retains its local colour and shines like a patch of fresh snow.
Beyond, once more beyond, spreads the Scythian steppe, not the dead
level of Lombardy, but an expanse of long low modulations, which would
be reckoned hills in our home counties, seamed by long shining
ribbons, which mark the courses of the tributaries of the Terek....
Southwards too, immediately under the snows, we find 'crystalline
schists,' smooth grassy heights, separated by shallow trenches, which
form the lesser undulations of the three basins, the _drei
Langenhochthaler Imeritiens_ of Dr Radde. These basins or
'longitudinal folds' are enclosed on the south by the long high ridge
of dark slates, which extends parallel to the crystalline [main] chain
from the neighbourhood of Sukhum-Kale to the Krestovaya Gora [pass of
Darial.] Behind this slate crest spreads a confused multitude of
hills, Jurassic and Cretaceous in their formation.... Their outer
edge, distant some 30 to 40 m. from the snows, is marked by a
limestone belt, lower and less continuous than that on the north,
which frames the gorges of the Rion, and rises in the Kuamli (6352
ft.) and Nakarala (4774 ft.) near Kutais, its best known
elevations."[2] It may be added that, south of the central watershed,
the strata, both Mesozoic and P