A similar practice no doubt prevailed with the powerful governors of Upper Georgia, of that remote and extensive province of Semo-Karthli which comprised the uppermost valleys of the Kur and Chorokh and the mountains of Ajara to the Kolchian coast. Known under the title of atabegs, they flourished in the fourteenth, fifteenth, and sixteenth centuries, became independent of the kings of Georgia, and were only suppressed at a late date by the Ottoman Turks. [14] Here was their seat of predilection during the heats of summer, and, except for the arid soil and crops of stones that cover the valleys, one cannot but approve their choice. You are at a height of some 1000 feet above the town of Akhaltsykh; deep below you flows the Kur, the river of Ardahan as they call it, on its way to pierce the barrier of the border ranges by the passage of Borjom. On the side of the ridge a narrow site, whence the ground declines abruptly to the abyss below, is filled by a cluster of little chapels, backed, at the extreme end, by an imposing church. I wish I could offer my reader an ampler description; but just at this point I am trusting entirely to my memory and bewailing the loss of a portion of the day's notes. Counting the chapels, they would tell you that the monastery contained twelve churches, while according to our notions it possesses only one. That one is St. Saba, of which I offer two illustrations, one to present the ensemble of the building with the adjacent belfry (Fig. 13), the other to exhibit the charming detail of the porch on the west (Fig. 14). In a treeless country, devoid of the rich bewilderment of a luxuriant Nature, and moulded on a scale which would mock the more ambitious creations of human effort and is everywhere present to the eye, such a jewel in stone as St. Saba and many another Armenian temple are seen at an advantage which they would scarcely possess in Western landscapes. Planted on the rough hillsides, overlooking vast expanses of plain and mountain, winding river and lonely lake, they offer at once a contrast to the bleakness of Nature and a quiet epitome of her startling forms. Take this church as an example of the most finished workmanship; what a pleasure to turn from the endless crop of chaotic boulders to the even surface of these walls of faced masonry which the dry climate preserves ever fresh, to the sharply chiselled stone-work of the elaborate mouldings and bands of arabesques! Or, if you extend the vision to comprise the distant scene about you, it will often happen that the mountain masses tower one above another like the roofs and gables by your side, and culminate in the shape of a dome with a conical summit which repeats these outlines, like a reflection, against the sky.