62 CASUALS IN THE CAUCASUS 



Each street, the narrowest of narrow lanes really, 

 has its own speciality. The shops are not jumbled up 

 heterogeneously as with us. Go down each unpaved 

 alley, and you know just what to expect. The vege- 

 table street provides only vegetables, that opening 

 strewn with garbage leads to the furriers', that to the 

 shoemakers' special section, and this uneven gully 

 takes us to the one of all for us — the silversmiths'. We 

 need courage to go down it ! A foreign excursionist is 

 hailed with the abandon of joy and delight which greets 

 the first American visitor of summer in the Lake 

 District of England, with the consequent rise of prices 

 all round. 



No sun shines here, and overhanging houses, built 

 largely of wood, hide the light of day. From alcoved 

 balconies above veiled houris peep down on us. At 

 least, they are houris whilst they remain veiled, and 

 just peep ! 



The scene is that of the old-time setting of a 

 pantomime harlequinade, if you can remember when 

 children were young enough to appreciate the now 

 obsolete foolery. Every low doorway seemed just the 

 one for the clown to rush from, thrusting yards of 

 stolen sausage into his capacious pockets as he ran ; 

 each window frame, innocent of glass, waited for the 

 lithe, silver figure of harlequin. But for the dainty 

 shoes of Columbine there was no resting-place. A 

 Columbine in American gum-boots would not do at all, 

 and nothing else would keep out the sea of dust, which 

 after a rain-storm churns into banks of brown foam 

 at the street corners, through which the mules, with 



