4 CASUALS IN THE CAUCASUS 



slanting to the sun. And on the near horizons, their 

 lofty peaks wrapped about in an everlasting snow 

 mantle, rise sombre, majestic reminders of the dark 

 and silent North. 



Many roads lead to Tiflis, the hub of the Caucasian 

 universe. If you would go from London, the route 

 via Berlin or Vienna to Odessa, thence by boat to 

 Batoum, will land you in Tiflis on the fifth day. But 

 if you think with Robert Louis the Beloved that to 

 travel hopefully is a much better thing than to arrive, 

 a fortnight may be happily expended in the longer 

 way round by Marseilles and direct boat to Batoum ; 

 from whence the Caucasian capital is got at by train. 



Every individual traveller the world over has his 

 own fixed, unalterable idea as to the best time to visit 

 a country, and nothing, not even an earthquake, ever 

 changes that point of view. And perhaps the arm- 

 chair voyager, sitting amidst a heap of deductions 

 and meteorological records, is the most " viewy " 

 wanderer of all. Only the sportsmen are unanimous, 

 for they are tied to Time and the Game Laws. 



" Not before July," says the shikdri. 



Et ego in Arcadia. July is the month for you and 

 me. Not only because ibex shooting commences, for 

 perhaps you do not want to slaughter ibex — lots of 

 people don't — but for the good reason that in summer 

 you can search for the climate you like the best and 

 be certain of finding it. Winter almost all over the 

 Caucasus is of true Russian variety, where, as De 

 Quincey puts it, " every man is but the co-proprietor 

 with the north wind in the fee simple of his own ears." 



