I was disinclined for several reasons to traverse this barrier, so that we might avail ourselves of either of the main roads. Erivan was our destination, the railway and the valley of the Akstafa our readiest means of access; but I was already familiar with the trough of the Kur between Tiflis and the Caspian, and I had read so many accounts of this approach to Armenia that the natural features of the several stages between the Georgian river and Lake Sevan seemed imprinted upon my mind. I was also anxious to gain some knowledge of the western portion of the tableland, of which I had only succeeded in obtaining from the literature of travel a wholly insufficient idea. To these districts the route by Borjom is at once the best-known avenue and that which combines with a lavish display of magnificent scenery the comforts of a beaten track. But to worm myself up the valley of the Kur to the Armenian highlands was, I thought, to miss an occasion which might not subsequently be offered of realising at the outset of our long journey the essential features and characteristics of the country we had come to see. In Asia so vast is the scale upon which Nature has operated, so much system has she bestowed upon her works, you may follow for hundreds of miles the same manifestations, till from some favourable point of vantage you may discover unfolded before you the clue and the abiding principles of her extensive and majestic plan. What approach was better calculated to offer large views over Nature and to instruct us in her designs than one which scaled the walls of the girdle ranges where they tower highest above land and sea? From Batum it might be possible to penetrate the mountains of Ajara, and debouch upon some of the most elevated regions of the plateau from which the upper waters and earliest affluents of the Kur decline; but the lower reaches of the Chorokh and its alpine tributaries intersect a most intricate and savage country, where the process of elevation has resulted in dislocation of the range, and has produced convulsions which, while they afford a most interesting field to the geologist and to the student of mountain-structure, have placed obstacles in the way of human communications which the traveller is not required to overcome. By following the bend of the chain up the coast and along the Rion until it again assumes a normal course, he may avoid this knot of ridges and maze of valleys and at the same time obtain a clearer and more definite conception of the geography of these lands. We learnt that there was a road from the plain of the Rion up the side and to the summit of the range; we soon decided upon the superior attractions which it promised, and took our tickets for the capital of the country on the west of the Meschic barrier, the ancient city of Kutais.