I doubt whether there exists in the nearer Asia a standpoint which commands a prospect at once so grand and so instructive as that which is unfolded from the summit of the Zikar Pass (Zikarski Perival; altitude by my Hicks mountain aneroid, 7164 feet; Russian survey, 7104 feet). With its double front towards north and south and the contrasting features of the dual landscape, it may be said to overlook two worlds. On the north the view ranges across the broad belt of wooded mountains, which culminate in this ridge, to the gigantic barrier of the Caucasus of which the peaks are distant some ninety to a hundred miles (Fig. 10). Invisible in the hollow lies the plain of the Rion; the crests before you, boldly vaulted and clad with forest to the very summits, sweep away to a dim horizon of grey mist; above that uncertain background the snows and glaciers of Caucasus appear suspended in the air among the clouds. Dense vapour shrouds the scene, and above the flashes of the snow a long bank of white cloud spreads fanwise up the sky. But turn to the south--the forms and texture of the earth's surface, the lights and shadows falling through a rarer atmosphere from lightly floating filaments of cloud, are those of a new world (Fig. 11). The pine wood still struggles down the hillside, and gathers from the blighted trunks around you to clothe the first valleys of the southern watershed. But the view will no longer close with successive walls of mountain; the road ceases winding up the slopes of successive outworks; every vertical line, each deep vaulting relaxes and disappears. The highest plains of the tableland attain about the same elevation as the pass upon which you stand; all the outlines in the distance are horizontal, all the shapes shallow-vaulted and convex. If you follow the long-drawn profiles of the loftier masses, it is the form of a cone that breaks the sky-line, and never that of a peak. The colours are lightly washed ochres and madders; the surface of the volcanic soil is bare of all vegetation; the shadows lie transparent and thin. Such was our first view of Armenia and such the impression which our later travel confirmed. CHAPTER III TO AKHALTSYKH