On the summit of this natural fortress some old
Georgian chief had, in the good old days of independence, built a massive
castle, and nestling beneath its protecting shadow around the base of the
butte is the town, a picturesque town of adobe and wattle walls and
quaint red tiles. So intensely verdant is the valley, so thickly wooded
the dark surrounding mountains, so brown the walls, so red the tiles, and
so picturesque the elevated castle, that even K goes into raptures, and
calls the picture beautiful.
The improvement in the Russian telegraph line, perhaps, owes something to
its brief association with the invading stranger from England; and now
among the sublime loveliness of this Caucasian Switzerland one finds the
station-houses built with far more pretence to the picturesque than on
the barren steppes toward Baku and the Caspian. Here is the Caucasia of
our youthful dreams, and the mystic hills and vales whence Mingrelian
princes issued forth to deeds of valor in old romantic tales. Urchins,
small mountaineers, more picturesquely clad than anything seen in Alpine
Italy, even, now offer us little baskets of wild strawberries at ten
copecks a basket-strawberries they and their little brothers and sisters
have gathered this very morning at the foot of the hills.
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