a place where the native hunters make sacrifices of tur
horns to propitiate the spirit, who might otherwise throw blocks of
ice down on their heads.

There is a popular legend to the effect that on the summit of Mkhinvari
is the tent of the Patriarch Abraham, within which, in a cradle held up
by an unseen hand, lies the child Jesus asleep; outside there grows
some wheat of wonderful size, beside the tree of life; round the
cradle are heaps of treasures. Under the reign of King Irakli II.,
a priest and his son started for the summit in order to see these
wonders; the boy returned alone, bearing samples of the material of
the tent, some big grains of wheat, &c., the soles of his boots were
covered with silver coins which had stuck to them--unfortunately it
wasa few Kazaks are quartered here,
and must find the time hang very heavily on their hands. When you
reach this fort it looks as if it were impossible to go beyond it,
a mighty wall stretches right across the path; but the road follows
the course of the river, indeed it is built in the river-bed, and
winds along between awful cliffs whose summits are lost in the clouds,
and whose flanks are seldom or never touched by a ray of sunlight. We
sometimes hear of places where a handful of men could keep back an
army, this is one of them; a touch would send down upon the road some
of the heavy, overhanging masses of rock, and effectually close the
pass. About fifty years ago an avalanche fell here, from the glacier
of Devdorak, and it