d at their base by a graceful balustrade. The
interior, open on all sides, contains an AEolian harp, the melancholy
notes of which, blending with all the mountain echoes, descend softly to
the valley.

The route of our travellers, after quitting Piatigorsk, lay along the
broad deep valley of the Pod Kouwa, which, on the right, is bounded by
rocks piled one upon another, like billows suddenly petrified, and
bearing witness to some great upheaval in the past; on the left, tier
after tier of richly wooded mountains rise gradually to the majestic
chain of the Kazbek. Eventually the road leaves the valley, at a point
where it has become very narrow, and traverses a long sinuous ledge,
parallel with the course of the torrent, until it begins to enter the
mountains. Here the miry soil through which their horses had laboured
with much difficulty, and the grey sky, and the moist atmosphere that
had hitherto accompanied them, were at once exchanged for a dry air,
cold, dust, and sunshine. This sudden contrast is a phenomenon peculiar
to elevated regions.

Madame de Hell was strongly impressed by the wild picturesque character
of the scenery of this part of the Caucasus. At certain intervals,
conical mounds of earth, about sixty feet high, stood conspicuous--watch
towers, where sentinels are stationed day and night. Their outlines,
sharply marked against the sky, produce a curious and striking effect
amidst the profound solitude. The sight of these Cossacks, with muskets
shouldered, pacing up and down the small platform on the summit of each
eminence, conveyed to the spectator's mind a knowledge of the rapid
advance which Russian civilization had made into this remote region.

It was mid-October, but vegetation still retained its freshness. The
steep mountain sides were covered with rich greenswards, which afforded
abundant pasture for the scattered flocks of goats. Their keepers,
clothed in sheepskins, and carrying, instead of the traditional crook,
long guns slung across their shoulders, with two or three powder and
ball cases at their waists, seemed in strange contrast to the pastoral
sentiment of the landscape. Gigantic eagles, roused from their eyries,
swept with heavy wing from crag to crag, the monarchs of these
solitudes. Here our travellers really looked out upon those features of
the Caspian wilderness on which their imaginations had so often dwelt.

Of the Circassian inhabitants of this mountain region, before they w