l6o PROCEEDINGS OF THE COTTESWOLD CLUB 



great plain of the river Kur. The soil along many parts of 

 the bank is a rich deep loam, resulting from the decom- 

 position of volcanic deposits. As we were jolting wearily 

 along — for 26 hours of continuous sitting in the cold, 

 wonderfully damps one's enthusiasm — my attention was 

 suddenly caught by a shovel with which a labourer was 

 digging near the roadside : for it was of the form used in 

 the Cornish mines. 



Some years before I had seen in Germany the same 

 long-hilted triangular shovel in use : and as German 

 miners were brought to Cornwall, I believe in Queen 

 Elizabeth's time, to instruct our countrymen in improved 

 methods of deep mining, I at once concluded that the 

 Cornish shovel must have been introduced by them ; if 

 not indeed during a still earlier visit of German tin-miners 

 to Cornwall, under an ancestor of the Godolphins. But 

 here was the same instrument in Asia: and the problem 

 needed further examination ; for it was not solved. 



We had to make a stay of some wrecks in Tiflis, and 

 during this interval I had opportunity for frequent visits 

 to the bazaars, and to examine the tools and methods 

 used in some of the handicrafts. Tiflis is a great centre 

 of commerce betw^een Persia and the Central Asian pro- 

 vinces on the one hand, and the Black Sea, with Con- 

 stantinople and Odessa on the other ; and the variety of 

 types, tribal and national, one meets with in the streets, 

 is as great as perhaps in any city in Asia. Besides some 

 sixty different peoples that make up the population of the 

 Transcaucasus, now, as in the days of Strabo, and repre- 

 sentatives of whom may from time to time be encountered 

 in the city, Tiflis itself has more than 100,000 souls, of 

 six diflferent nations, each of which retains its individuality, 

 and holds somewhat aloof from the rest. There are the' 

 Russians, constituting the official and upper classes, as well 

 as Cosacks and other military ; Georgians ; Armenians ; 

 Tartars (some of them descendants of the soldiers of 



