T1PLIS 193 



On this, my first night at Tiflis, I had little 

 time to spend in admiring or wondering at the pic- 

 turesque medley of men and things all round me. 

 All my time was more than filled with hotel hunt- 

 ing. Not a single hotel in the town had a room 

 unoccupied, though I tried more hotels in that one 

 night in Tiflis than I ever imagined the whole 

 Caucasus possessed collectively. The cause of this 

 was simply that the Lord Lieutenant was about to 

 leave Tiflis next morning, and all the gay world 

 of the Caucasus was in town to bid him farewell. 



At last I found a resting-place in the worst 

 inn's worst room, high up next to the rafters that 

 supported the roof, without any furniture, even the 

 bed being represented only by the post-house couch, 

 two feet too short for my legs. However, if my 

 room had its disadvantages by night, it had its 

 advantages by day, for in the morning the view 

 from my fourth story (the only fourth story, I 

 should think, in Tiflis) was superb. 



The town lies clustered round the banks of the 

 river Kiir, a broad stream, with steep banks where 

 it passes through the town. Over its dark waters 

 rise tiers of flat-topped houses with external bal- 

 conies, where the ladies take the air and smoke 

 their cigarettes in the summer evening*, if their 

 husbands cannot afford to take them to the fashion- 

 able summer resort of Tiflis in the hills. Here and 

 there fine modern buildings of European character 







