BLACK SEA COAST. 85 



the good intentions of the Government are too 

 frequently frustrated. 



Never was I more heartily thankful than when 

 we came to what was (for us) the end of this exe- 

 crable road ; and when at the Tscherkess village of 

 Enem we saw our horses waiting for us, I felt 

 almost content with the instruments of torture which 

 Cossacks call saddles upon their backs. The ' aoul ' 

 (village) was fenced about with wattled walls, 

 and seemed a busy, thriving little place, but as far 

 as I could see contained none of those lovely 

 women of whom one has heard so much in ' Lalla 

 Rookh ' and elsewhere. And perhaps I may be 

 permitted to say here that neither at Tiiiis nor in 

 Daghestan, nor elsewhere in the Caucasus, have I 

 seen, either among the peasants or the upper classes, 

 one single face sufficiently beautiful to attract a 

 second glance in London. 1 had heard so much of 

 Georgian beauty that, like the aurochs, it was one 

 of the things I had come to look for, and, like the 

 aurochs, I never found it. I have brought back 

 several photographs of typical Caucasian face.s, 

 bought at various photographers, who seem to me 

 to have always chosen the best-looking people the}' 

 could find, yet even so they are by no means 

 strikingly beautiful. The men, if you will, are 

 many of them magnificent, and as handsome as 

 they are well built ; but for the women, even 

 those who have good features are so totally devoid 



