200 TIFLIS. 



is a good deal drunk by the ladies, called ' Donskoi.' 

 It is something like Moselle, red in colour and 

 unbearably sweet to the palate. The people drink 

 vodka and rough native wine in their ' cabaks ' and 

 ' duchans,' as well as a rough kind of beer, very sweet, 

 and more like what mead must have been than like 

 any beer of to-day. Tiflis itself is full of beer- 

 halls, but these are rather for the military and the 

 Germans than for the natives. These Germans 

 are, I fancy, an unpopular race in the Caucasus as 

 well as in Russia, not from any inherent vice in 

 their natures, but from the fact that, being more 

 civilised than their neighbours, they utterly refuse 

 to mix with them, living apart in their colonies, 

 with their own society, school, and church, prosper- 

 ing beyond any other settlers, and by their staid 

 sobriety and orderly, thrifty life, forming a contrast 

 to the life around them too favourable to them- 

 selves to be pleasing to their neighbours. ' Neinets ' 

 and ' colbasnik ' dummy and sausage-eater are 

 the sobriquets in which they rejoice. 



On the fourth day after iny arrival at Tiflis the 

 town, in spite of its novelty and ever-varying 

 scenes, began to pall upon me, and with some 

 difficulty I arranged a shooting expedition to the 

 neighbouring steppe of Karias. Here the Grand 

 Duke holds his shooting parties, and enormous are 

 the bags made, though the festivities are of such a 

 nature as one would imagine to interfere con- 



