TIFLIS. 205 



pose.' Raids upon sheep and cattle are of common 

 occurrence, and free fights take place between the 

 villages. The cattle stolen are generally driven across 

 the river and sold at Elizabetpol. Every village 

 is, I believe, theoretically responsible for the mis- 

 doings of each of its inhabitants ; and thus a man's 

 neighbours are to some extent converted into ama- 

 teur policemen, who watch and report his deeds. 

 But as a crime is rarely the result of one individual's 

 enterprise, the culprit is rarely run to ground ; and 

 even if he is, the village pays an inadequate fine, 

 and there is an end of it. 



Tiflis itself is under military law, and at the 

 moment when I left it for K arias three men were 

 under sentence of death for a glaring outrage com- 

 mitted in broad day in the streets. Two were 

 to be hanged, and one, in consideration of his 

 rank as a nobleman, though filling a menial posi- 

 tion, was to be shot. 



But the stories of the lawlessness of the Cau- 

 casus might be continued ad infinitum, were it not 

 that they would become monotonous, and, as our 

 consul himself remarked, the state of the country 

 is so bad that an honest account of it would not 

 find credence in England. I am tempted to say 

 more on this subject than I might otherwise have 

 done, because travellers who have recently written 

 on the Caucasus, having kept much to the post- 

 roads, and, luckily, escaped molestation upon them, 



