TIFLIS AND ITS INHABITANTS 63 



bells a-j angle, wade knee-deep, and camels with dis- 

 dainful heads level with the roofs, moving silently 

 as grey wraiths, sink in philosophic calm. 



Here is a medley of nations, and the tongue of every 

 land. The familiar " Salaam Aleikum " of a stately 

 Arab answers the gay " Bon Jour " of a smiling 

 Frenchman, our awkward " How-do-you-do ? " replied 

 to the dull " Gutenmorgen " of a ponderous German. 

 Georgians, Mingrelians, wild mountaineers from Dagh- 

 estan, in massive sheepskin papaks and ragged 

 tscherkesskas, Tatar shepherds, and Tatar traders in 

 blue cotton tunics and white skull caps, Persians, long- 

 haired Russian priests in cassocks of rusty purple and 

 with conspicuous rosaries, graceful Arabs, with the lithe 

 swinging walk which tells of the desert and the great 

 silences, smartly uniformed Russians, stolid Armenians, 

 and strange primitive people to whom I could give no 

 name. We were rubbing shoulders with the remote 

 centuries, and felt the subtle charm of antiquity 

 charged with the vital force of a gripping modernism. 



Down an obscure labyrinthine alley an unhooded 

 goshawk sat leashed to a padded perch, shaped like a 

 music-stool in miniature, Kenneth, who is a keen 

 falconer, made a straight line for this attraction, and 

 conducted a conversation by means of signs with a 

 Persian, who drowsed in the dust alongside his bird. 

 Numbers of little Tatar children danced in the narrow 

 way to the strains of a barrel-organ, and as they 

 peacocked by in a cake-walk of their own invention, 

 the beautiful bird cringed low to its perch as though 

 in deadly fear. Bold as brass with its owner, and even 



