ABSTRACT
I WAS at Kutais in the beginning of May, and I walked from that town two hundred miles across the Caucasus to Vladikavkaz, which I am told is a notable feat. It will certainly remain very notable in my mind, both in respect of the sights I saw and of the adventures I survived. I ascended from the Italian loveliness of Imeretia, where the wild fruit was already ripening in the forests, to the bleak and barren solitudes of Ossetia, where I had to plough my way through ten miles of waist-deep snow. I was attacked by roughs at Gurshevi and escaped from them only to lose myself on the Mamison Pass, where I found the road overswept by a twelve-feet drift of snow. I spent the night with shepherds on the pass in a koutan, a shelter for cows and sheep, half-house, half-cave, made of stones and mud. A shepherd showed me a track over the snow next morning, and after five hours of the most arduous walking I ever did in my life I reached the other side of the Caucasus. But I arrived there only to have a new adventure. A heavy snowstorm had come on so that it was difficult to find the road, and at Lisri I inquired of a hillman lounging in the way. This man arrested me as a spy and asked ten shillings to release me, and since I refused to pay the bribe I was hailed before the Ataman to give an account of myself. Such account proving unsatisfactory, I was formally arrested, and in fact remained a prisoner for five days. Strangely enough I was hospitably entertained during my captivity by chiefs and priests, but the fifth night I spent actually in prison, in a dirty Caucasian gaol with two robbers and a madman.
