TIFLIS AND ITS INHABITANTS 75 



in a political career it is just all the world to know how 

 to quit the arena with a smiHng grace. Stephan had 

 learnt the lesson. He vanished as he had come, on the 

 shoulders of the people, laughing and bowing as he 

 sank submerged. And there we left him. 



Perhaps Stephan found his subject later, I cannot 

 tell. 



Returning to our auherge we found Kenneth on the 

 verandah, sitting in a bower of red geraniums, tired out 

 after a hunt for a sort of dragoman-courier. He was 

 taking a little rest, he said, reading of the misfortunes 

 of Calandrino in the Decameron. Something like the 

 old soldier who found peace in the pages of the first 

 volume of the official history of the South African 

 War. 



The Caucasus has not as yet, luckily for its comfort, 

 produced the species of dragoman peculiar to the 

 East, and the local make-shift guides are not even a 

 graft on the well-known type, being manufactured on 

 the whilst-you-wait principle. Nomadic European 

 travellers in the Caucasus are not plentiful enough to 

 create a race of vampire travelling servants. Even 

 the roads of the country in its wilder parts are con- 

 structed on the old Spanish principle of keeping people 

 off them. 



If you feel that you cannot do without a guide and 

 express that desire, something will turn up. And from 

 the recesses of old Tifiis came Ali Ghirik, a black- 

 browed, extremely old stalwart from Daghestan. 

 After a soaking in one of the famous baths, he seemed 

 a really worth-having acquisition, notwithstanding his 



