TIFLIS. 201 



siderably with the shooting. But, alas ! for us, 

 there were to be no royal forests with innumerable 

 beaters and any quantity of boars and tall red 

 deer. Our hunting grounds were the wide steppe- 

 lands outside the viceregal preserves, where ante- 

 lopes (subgutturosce) and all the ruffians who are 

 wanted by the Government at Tiflis do mostly 

 congregate. 



Early, then, in the morning, while the stars 

 were making up their minds to retire for the day, 

 and a faint pink was just stealing into the sky, 

 our party rattled out of Tiflis ; the English consul 

 and myself on horseback, the rest of our party on 

 wheels. Our way lay through the Tartar bazaar, 

 where the fiery-bearded Persians and astute Arme- 

 nians were already astir, and then over the broad 

 Kur, and through lands which but for the arti- 

 ficial irrigation of which the Kur is the source 

 would be absolutely barren. On our road we met 

 a quaint cavalcade, if that may be called a caval- 

 cade which contained but one horse : a vast train 

 of donkeys, some brown, some white, several 

 hundreds in number, part bearing bales of mer- 

 chandise, and part their owners. Here and there 

 amongst the troop a black conical tent ambled along, 

 nothing visible but the tent with four thin legs 

 trotting along under it. This was a Tartar or 

 Persian on his donkey, his ' bourka ' round his neck, 

 hanging in loose folds to his animal's knees, and 



