The Ossets call themselves Ir or Iran, the Tatars and Georgians call them Oss or Ossi. According to official accounts they number over 100,000, about half of them being on each side of the Caucasus. The majority of them profess the Christian religion, but 15,000 are Mahometans, and a considerable number are idolaters. Their traditions say that they came from Asia across the Ural, and used at one time to dwell in the plain to the north of the Caucasus, but were gradually driven into the mountains by stronger peoples. In the reign of Queen Tamara most of them embraced Christianity, and Tamara's second husband was an Osset; they remained tributary to Georgia until the beginning of the present century, and a traveller who visited Tiflis about a hundred years ago says that Irakli's bodyguard was composed of Ossets "who never washed." The Ossets were the first Caucasian people to settle down quietly to Russian rule, and they have never given any serious trouble, if we except their share in the Imeretian rising of 1810. The stories about the Ossets being a Teutonic people are as absurd as the assertion that there are in the Crimea Northmen who speak Dutch. They live in a wretched manner, in houses built of loose stones, without mortar; but their physique is good, and their faces are handsome and engaging. After another long climb of 1300 feet we reach Mleti. Here, indeed, we have come to the end of the valley--we are at the bottom of a deep well with sides as bare and steep as walls, on the top glitters the everlasting snow. The engineering difficulties which we have hitherto encountered are as nothing compared with those before us. To our right rises a precipice over three thousand feet high, up which the road climbs in a series of zigzags. Soon after leaving Mleti we saw the sun set behind the silvery peaks to the west, and within half an hour it was dark; our driver was drunk and fast asleep, and we had occasionally to seize the reins in order to keep the horses from going too near the fenceless edge of the abyss. The distance to Gudaur is only fourteen and a half versts, but nearly the whole ascent has to be done at walking pace; slowly we rose up the hillside, gazing silently now up at the glistening chain above us, now down into the gloomy valley behind us, where a fleecy waterfall shone in the starlight; we saw no wayfarers all the time, and no sound came to break the stillness of the summer night.