A Persian prince was expected. At some distance from Kazbek several carriages came towards us and obstructed the narrow road. While the vehicles worked past each other, the convoy officer told us that he was accompanying a Persian court poet and, at my wish, introduced me to Fazil Khan.33 With the help of an interpreter, I started on a grandiloquent oriental greeting; how ashamed I was when Fazil Khan responded to my inappropriate whimsicality with the simple, intelligent courtesy of a decent man! He hoped to see me in Petersburg; he was sorry that our acquaintance would be of short duration, and so on. Embarrassed, I was forced to abandon my pompously jocular tone and descend to ordinary European phrases. This is a lesson for our Russian love of mockery. In the future, I will not judge a man by his lambskin papakha*5 and painted nails.
The Kobi outpost is located right at the foot of the Mountain of the Cross, which we now had to go over. We spent the night there and started thinking about how to perform this dread exploit: should we abandon our carriages and mount Cossack horses or send for Ossetian oxen? Just in case, I wrote an official request on behalf of our whole caravan to Mr. Chilyaev, who was in command of these parts, and we went to sleep in expectation of the carts.
The next day around noon we heard noise, shouting, and saw an extraordinary spectacle: eighteen pair of skinny, puny oxen, prodded by a crowd of half-naked Ossetes, were dragging with great difficulty the light Viennese carriage of my friend O. This spectacle at once dispelled all my doubts. I decided to send my heavy Petersburg carriage back to Vladikavkaz and ride on horseback to Tiflis. Count Pushkin did not want to follow my example. He preferred to hitch his britzka, laden with all sorts of supplies, to the whole herd of oxen and cross the snowy ridge in triumph. We parted and I went further on with Colonel Ogarev, who was inspecting the local roads.
The road went through an avalanche that had occurred at the end of June, 1827. These things usually happen every seven years. An enormous block fell down, burying the gorge for a mile, and damming up the Terek. Sentries, standing downstream, heard a terrible noise and saw that the river was quickly getting shallow and in a quarter of an hour was completely still and drained. The Terek ate its way through the avalanche only two hours later. Oh, how terrifying it was!
We climbed steeply higher and higher. Our horses sank into the loose snow, under which streams gurgled. I looked at the road with amazement and did not understand how it was possible to travel on wheels.
Just then I heard a muted rumble. “That’s an avalanche,” said Mr. Ogarev. I turned and saw to one side a heap of snow crumbling and slowly sliding down the steep slope. Small avalanches are not uncommon here. Last year a Russian driver was going over the Mountain of the Cross; there was an avalanche: a frightful block of snow fell on his vehicle, swallowed cart, horse, and muzhik, tumbled across the road and down into the abyss with its booty. We reached the very top of the mountain. A granite cross had been set up there, an old monument, restored by Ermolov.
Here travelers usually get out of their carriages and go on foot. Recently some foreign consul came here: he was so shaky that he asked to be blindfolded; he was led under the arms, and when they took off his blindfold, he sank to his knees and thanked God, and so on, which greatly amazed the guides.
The instantaneous transition from the formidable Caucasus to winsome Georgia is ravishing. The air of the south suddenly begins to waft over the traveler. From the height of Mount Gut the Kaishaur valley opens out, with its inhabited cliffs, its gardens, its bright Aragva, meandering like a silver ribbon—and all this in miniature, at the bottom of a two-mile-deep chasm, along which goes a dangerous road.
We were descending into the valley. A young crescent moon appeared in the clear sky. The evening air was gentle and warm. I spent the night on the bank of the Aragva, in the house of Mr. Chilyaev. The next day I parted from my amiable host and went further on.
Here Georgia begins. Bright valleys watered by the merry Aragva replaced the gloomy gorges and the formidable Terek. Instead of bare cliffs I saw around me green mountains and fruit trees. Aqueducts demonstrated the presence of civilization. One of them struck me with a perfect optical illusion: the water seemed to be flowing uphill.
