lus 77,, Caucasian Mountains and their Inhabitants. 



Besides weaving cloth from the wool which they them- 



sclvs have prepared, making the garments required for 

 the household, they have much of the out-door work to 

 do. This devolves more particularly upon the oldest, the 

 worn-out BO-called, women, while the younger are kept 

 with considerable seclusion, are regarded with no little 

 jealousy. The dress, too, of these females who are termed 

 passe, is often disjointed, scanty, neglected ; while that of 

 the unmarried, or the newly married, is in the Mending 

 of colors, in janty grace, in brilliancy of effect, all that 

 exquisite feminine taste can possibly make it. 



The out-door work that I have alluded to, consists prin- 

 cipally in attending to the sheep, goats, cows, in bringing 

 wood from the wooded heights, and hay, which perhaps 

 they had cut and stacked. 



The architecture of this people would not particularly 

 interest a poet, nor hardly a common pedestrian. The 

 Georgian style in many places, though there are noble 

 exceptions, is no better, is indeed similar in every respect. 

 I remember having passed a place a great number of 

 times and never having had my attention attracted to it 

 except as the natural declivity of a small hill or embank- 

 ment on the southern side of a broad, dirty, unpaved 

 street. Oue day, however, much to my astonishment, I 

 saw a door open at its base and quite a' family issue from 

 it. On the eastern banks of the Kur, almost in the very 

 heart of the capital of New Russia, many Georgian 

 families live under ground or nearly so ; live in excava- 

 tions made in the hill-side, where nothing is required but 

 a roof; and this roof, after being timbered, is often 

 covered with the very sods that had been removed from 

 that very place. A gentleman told me that he once rode 

 along over some of these habitations and was not aware of 

 their existence till his horse fell through one of them. 



