Note 4 — Chapter II · ASCENT TO ARMENIA

Verst after verst we might count our progress on the white milestones, but we rarely observed a sign of the presence of man. A Georgian wayfarer, staff in hand, a peasant’s cottage with its wide verandah, were the infrequent incidents in a scene which still belonged to Nature, and with which such figures and such objects harmonised. At last at the side of the road where the forest was thickest we came upon a solitary little cabin, a neat wooden structure, which we at once recognised as our shelter for the night. It was a quarter-past seven o’clock and we had reached an altitude of 1900 feet.4 During the space of some fourteen miles from our mid-day station, the valley to which we had throughout been faithful had narrowed to a deep trough; and an hour before our arrival at the hut of Zikari the read was taken for a short space along the left bank of the stream, in order to avoid a projecting buttress of its eastern wall.