Leaving Mtzkhet, our road follows the Aragva along a smooth valley between forest-clad hills; the scenery reminded me very much of some of the dales of Thelemarken in Norway. The soil is rich and well cultivated, and here, as elsewhere, we saw a whole herd of oxen dragging one wooden plough. This valley is one of the most feverish places on the whole road, and the people attribute this to a yellow weed (Carlina arcaulis), of which there is a great abundance; strange to say, other places where the plant flourishes have the same unpleasant reputation for unhealthiness, the explanation is doubtless to be found in the fact that this weed grows best in a damp soil. Tsilkani is the next station, but there is no village there. While waiting for horses we saw in the yard a camel; there are plenty of these amiable animals in Tiflis, but I did not think they went so far north as the Aragva. The scenery continues to be of the same character as far as the station of Dushet, some distance from the garrison-town of that name, which lies in rectangular regularity on the hillside, like a relief map; it is a place of some military importance on account of its position at the entrance of the narrow part of the valley, but it is as uninteresting as any Russian provincial town. Near it is a lake, said to cover a Caucasian Sodom; the traveller looks at the lake with more attention than he would bestow upon it if it were in Switzerland, for lakes, like waterfalls, are very rare in the Caucasus. Soon after leaving Dushet we climb a rather steep hill--the wilder part of the road is about to begin. On our left is a huge, antique-looking edifice with towers and battlements, which we feel sure has a romantic history, but we are disappointed to learn that the place is only a modern imitation. At a pretty spot on the river-bank near here I met on my return a party of about fifty prisoners on their way to Siberia; they were, as a rule, honest enough looking fellows, and I could not help feeling pity for them when I remembered how many cases I knew of in which innocent men had been ruined in mind and body, by exile for crimes with which they had no connection. The road crosses a range of green hills, and passing through scenery very like that of Kakheti, descends to the Aragva again at Ananur, the most picturesque village on the whole road, although the surrounding landscape is tame compared with that to the northward.