At Gogatel, a small fort situated south of the Andian range, which runs parallel with the Andian branch of the Koissu, Woronzoff established a depot of such provisions and munitions of war as could not conveniently be transported further. This was but a single day's journey from Dargo; and on the seventeeth of July, all preparations having been fully made, and summer being in mid-reign, the order of march was given out for the morrow. The soldiers, lightly laden, set off cheerfully by the light of the resplendent dawn; and before the freshness of the morning was gone they had crossed by the pass of Retschel into the beech-woods of Itchkeria. Then began the fight. The hostile tribes of all the region round were up in arms, and waiting in the depths of the woods for the enemy. As his vanguard reached the first narrow and precipitous defile they were received by a murderous fire from behind numerous trunks of trees which, felled across the way, served as breast-works for the one party and obstacles to the progress of the other. Besides these barricades, the barriers no less difficult of removal, which were woven by nature, of thousands of vines and flower-bearing creepers, the narrowness and steepness of the paths, added to the opposition of the enemy, rendered the march so difficult that on an average it did not exceed one and a half wersts the hour. Still Woronzoff fought his way through; and as the shades of night began to gather under the woods he was in sight of Dargo. But it was the aoul in flames which, joined to the reappearing stars, now lit up the way; for Schamyl, having gathered together whatever of wood, straw, and grain could not be taken away, had set it all on fire, thereby leaving to the enemy the conquest of merely the blackened stone walls of the houses. Indeed the burning ruins of his own residence supplied the bivouac fires by which the weary soldiers cooked their evening meal, and then lay down to sleep. The next day the fight was renewed. Schamyl had retired with a force of about six thousand warriors to a height which commanded the aoul, and thence opened a fire upon the Russians with their own cannon, the trophies of former victories. The "emperor's pistols" consumed indeed too much powder to be fired with any great rapidity, nor did the mountaineers know how to take aim over a six-pounder as well as they did along the barrels of their rifles; still one ball came bounding into the very tent of the staff of officers, and it became necessary, therefore, in order to prevent accidents, to scale the height. After not a little hard fighting this was finally done at the point of the bayonet; but the Circassians retired, dividing the honors of the field with the enemy, for they carried off the guns.