#i got into the 2nd stratum a few days ago

[littlechibs]

I'm back, I've been playing Etrian Odyssey and then also tweeting about DetCo and Kamen Rider Ryuki over on twitter

So this is your reminder that if you wanna see what I'm up to I'm more active over on twitter at Little_Chibs

[anne-lister-adventures]

Wednesday, 8 April 1840

5 50/’’

11 3/4

Incurred a cross last night thinking of Pi-Mariana Fine but dull morning Reaumur 11 1/4º on my window near my bed at 7 a.m. breakfast over at 8 1/4 – Paid George - A soldier brought in yesterday afternoon égorgé terribly cut and maimed – Went to the woods for firewood his horse returned without him about 5 p.m. and he was found soon afterwards and brought home to his wife and children – The soldiers here chiefly from the Government of Tchernikoff – 

Off at 8 3/4 so thick we could hardly see the mountains close by – In 1/2 hour arrive at wood - The wood and about the place where the soldier was murdered yesterday and come near to the broad bouldery bedded Terek – Not much water no difficulty in fording hereabouts – 

At 9 40/’’ at and pass thro’ the little village of Redante on the hill right – Here Persian petticoat like trousers and Circassian and Persian costume 1st time and enter the defile – Défilé de Terek – High calcaire compacte wooded rock close above us right, and river perpendicular below left, and broad bed and a stripe of wood and yellow sedge grass take up all the breadth of the defile – Closed on the other side by thickly wooded high mountain – Very picturesque willows and sedge between the streams of the river here and there – Defile 1/2 mile wide? up and down road along the ft.[foot] and side of the mountain and now and then in the bottom – 

Traditional Circassian clothes. (Image Source)

Tcherkess (Costume Perse) at work squaring stone (perhaps for the new bridge at Vladicavkas – To have all stone piliers and cost 60,000) and in the little streams finest water cresses I ever saw – Strata dip from S.[South] to N.[North] a few Pinus Sylvestris looking like shrubs sprinkled on the perpendicular faces of the rock –

All the rest beech and oak – Many fine hazels close to the road and some white thorn and much barbeny[barberry] – The rock (right) high and very fine, and the loud murmuring Terek very interesting – Too thick to see far before us – By and by river within deep sand rock banks – White cottage like building (a little farm or fort?) on little hill above us right and enter the narrow gorge at a sharpish angle at 10 20/’’this brêche in the mountains (our pass) very fine for some distance before we came up to it –

And at 10 20/’’ 11 or 12 of the little square huts mills on the streams – Just room here (on entering this narrow part) for broad bed of river (divided into little streams) and our 6 or 7 yards broad road – And now and then a little margin of wood on the other side the river – 

At 10 40/’’ 6 or 7 poor little huts and 5 minutes after walled up remains of old road cut out of the rock a little to our right – We in the bottom below – And soon afterwards pass lime kiln – And soldiers burning the lime – Hazel, barberry, white thorn and Kisil, as small wood by the road side – A little sun and clearer now at 10 55/’’ – Some of the hill-mountain tops clear – 

At 11 1/4 on 2 hills on the other side the river (left) 2 white buildings farms or fortress over a little gorge winding to the left, and one stone building a fort? close above us right – Merely little dots of snow here and there on the mountains – 11 3/4 at Tower above us right and slaty rock dipping perpendicularly – 

At 11 52/’’ on rock-hill in the middle of the gorge picturesque fort of Lars a tall square tapering Tower and little old castle-like building – That we pass under right and thro’ little street of low poor little cottages and at 11 55/’’ stop at the goodish white Station House (left) at Lars – A porticoed doorway and 2 windows on each side, one story high – 

Very picturesque little white village at the foot of the partly bare bouldery and partly wooded mountains – Not much more than room for village and river – A-[Ann] got out and sketched – I wrote so far of today till now 1 10/’’ and then went to A-[Ann] sketching the old ruined fortress from just before our entrance into the little town consisting a street of about 9 little white washed cottages – Huts on a side, and the Station House about the middle of the street side next the river – A good barrack at the other end of the Town 1 story high 7 windows on one side 6 on the other side the door – The defile very fine from here – Very narrow and the rocks high – Just room for street and river – The old fortress very picturesque – The rock a black schistose shale with an appearance of containing organic remains – Large cylinders as in trunks of trees – They had waited for us – 

Off at 1 40/’’ – At 1 55/’’ little cascade (right) the 1st and only one we have seen in the mountains so far not much water – But height considerable and the little fall pretty – At 2 22/’’ 1st of the 3 bridges over the river between Lars and Dariel – Narrow bouldery rocky foaming Terek – The stream 4 or 5 yards broad? not more tho’ the bridge five or six times as long – A small hut at the other end of the bridge and a soldier on guard – Fine narrow naked rock pass – The defile strewed with big and less boulders and masses of fallen rock – Passed one enormous mass (larger than the famous one in the Val d’Heas aux Pyrenees) about 10 minutes ago – (About 2 10/’’) – Granite soon not long after Lars – 

2d.[2nd] bridge said Mr. B-[Bachmetieff] about 1/2 verst from 1st stopt about 100 yards from it for 5 or 6 minutes at 5 28/’’ – 2 wheels of the servants Kibitka so broken obliged to tie them up as well as one could – The road here close upon the precipice of the rapidy river, and here, on the other side close upon the stream, the arch Mr. B-[Bachmetieff] spoke of as being so interesting – I understood from him it was an arch belonging to the old road – It is simply a piece of natural rock from under which the water has wash the stratum of indurated sand at top white and darkish and bituminous looking at bottom – This stratum 5 or 6 feet thick is seen here between the immense mass of superincumbent rock and the rock beneath lying like what my colliers would call seat-earth – 

“The Pass of Derial on the River Terek, north of the Caucasus range” by Sir Robert Porter, 1817. © British Library, used here under fair use rules.

3d.[3rd] bridge at 2 50/’’ and at the far end of this as of the 2d.[2nd] little hut and sentinel as at the first – The mist cleared off a little here, so as to shew the singular conformation of the rock in tall pointed cones, and at 2 53/’’ about 200 yards from the 3d.[3rd] bridge Dariel on right bank of river –   

Stop here to shew podarojna and to pay 4 Silver Rubles in addition for having 12 horses instead of 6 – The man said his salary was very small – It was very triste being there without his wife and children and begged me to give him something – Paid 15/- + one S.[Silver] R.[Rouble] = 18/50 ∴[therefore] he 4 1/2 Ruble assignats for himself which seemed to satisfy him tolerably – Dariel is merely a good barrack consisting of 3 or 4 white buildings round a little oblong court, capable I should think of containing 500 or 600 or more? a chevre de frieze gate running on a little solid wheel –

This plan common here for heavy gates or gate-doors – The old ruins B-[Bachmetieff] spoke of are small remains of old fort or castle on high conical rock projecting forwards into the defile, at a little beyond the properest barrack-fort on the opposite or left bank of the river – B-[Bachmetieff] said Pliny mentioned there being a fort here – Antique Porte Caspienne – Dariel (pronounced Dār-yŏl) is in the very neck, narrowest part, of the pass – 

Off from Dariel 7 v.[versts] from Lars at 3 13/’’ – Soon afterwards pass a Teleaga and 4 horses and the Post in Teleaga with 4 horses – The latter had been detained 4 days in consequence of the snow and the Teleaga not being able to pass the mountain at the summit, but the bags were forwarded Mr. B-[Bachmetieff] told me – 

At 3 1/2 gneiss or schistose rock with perpendicular stripes (veins) about a foot broad some legs of black schist – Granite boulders by and by and the mountain sides covered with gravel and debris so as to look like conglomerate mountains – Enormous boulders and masses of tumble down rock, black, green, irony, granity, and calcareous? – Spots and streaks of snow on the mountains now at 4 p.m. – At 4 20/’’ just room for road and river – A shingly small bouldery versant left, and on the right the rock broken into perpendicular ragged conical sharp pointed summits a stunted style of the sketch on the last p.[page] – Then the defile widens a little but the whole bottom a rough bouldery torrent-bed – How the river must be swollen at times to roll over all this breadth 200 or 300 yards+? 

“Darial Gorge” by Rufin Sudkovsky.

At 5, left at a little distance on high ground but almost enveloped in mist (damp drizzling small rain frozen into small hail) an old cracked leaning tapering square Tower of rough stone and mortar like the old fort at Lars and old ruins at Dariel, the sides gathered up so as almost to meet and cover the over in a sort of rounded pyramid top – A sort of chimney on one side – This queer Tower must be ancient – Then descend on the little stone walled tapering square towered old fortress like fort and village of Kasbek – Enter the modern white washed barrack fort and soon comfortably lodged in the Government Inn – 2 rooms for us all – A-[Ann] and I have never been packed in such little room but we do very well – Paid for our horses -/14 per horse per verst 41 1/2 v.[versts] – And gave our 3 Cossacks a Silver Rubel this time – Never so liberal before – 

The Mareschal employed for Government (a soldier of course) engages to find 3 good new wheels for 14 S.[Silver] R.[Rubles] = 49/- to be ready by 12 tomorrow – The wife of the soldier who has care of the Inn and strangers, is a Pole, just returned from 1 1/2 year captivity hard worked among the Tcherkess – 600 v.[versts] from here – Near the Caspian – At Anadan or some such name – Her husband petitioned the General of the District who came this way, and the made one of the Princes Soumis answerable for finding her – 100 S.[Silver] R.[Roubles] paid for her ransom – Taken at the entrance of the narrow part of the Defile (vide p.[page] 146) going to Vladicavkas – An officer with her (unarmed) – He killed and the driver wounded – Only 2 Tcherkess – Another woman with her who could speak a few words of their language said she was the slave of our little Pole ∴[therefore] they let her go home with her infant that she had with her – Our poor little Pole was stripped and made to travel (ride) 5 nights with nothing but her shift on – 2d.[2nd] week in Carême 2 years ago and colder than now – the people live in very sorry huts – Immense fine forests, immense trees, near where she was – She refused to change to be Mahometan – Several more Russian prisoners there – The wife of a Cossack Captain still there has changed her religion – When the troops go, the prisoners are driven away into the woods, and the people say they are Soumis – The troops return and the prisoners remain unfound – 

The whole of the Pass today from the narrow part especially very fine – From Dariel it is a chaos sublimely wild and desolate – The Terek is about like the Gave below St. Sauveur? One fried trout lukewarm for breakfast this morning and much better quite cold at tea between 7 and 8 this evening – Had our little Pole for 10 minutes or more just before tea – George interpreted – Domna stood by sighing in deep interest at the terrible tale – 

Darial (or, as Anne calls it, Dariel) ravine. (Image Source)

Fine day but never clear and damp and drizzling frozen small hail and foggy for some time before our arrival this evening – Had just written so far now at 10 p.m. –

8 3/4 to 11 55/’’ Vladicavkas to Lars

1 40/’’ to 5 10/’’ L-[Lars] to Kasbek

 [symbols in the margin of the page:]         X

[in the margin of the page:]             Defile du Terek

[in the margin of the page:]             Narrow part of Defile

[in the margin of the page:]            Bridges over the Terek

[in the margin of the page:]            Natural arch in stratum of indurated sand

[in the margin of the page:]            Dariel

[in the margin of the page:]            Ruins of old fort

[in the margin of the page:]            Tapering square Tower

[in the margin of the page:]            Kasbeck

[in the margin of the page:]            our hostess taken by the Tcherkess

[in the margin of the page:]            Observation on the Pass

Page References: SH:7/ML/E/24/0076 and SH:7/ML/E/24/0077