TIFLIS. 223 



the street corners you are run over by rough carts 

 dragged creaking drearily along by grim -looking 

 buffaloes, and if you avoid this fate, a stalwart 

 waterman with bare brown legs and a round skull- 

 cap of white felt, with only one garment on, and 

 that all open at the chest, displaying a skin of red 

 copper colour, with a huge jar of terra-cotta on his 

 shoulder filled with the precious fluid which he so 

 seldom uses will jostle and knock you down. Nor 

 must you lose your temper ; for to strike or 

 roughly handle one of these gentry in their own 

 domains would be to call down the wrath of the 

 whole bazaar on your devoted head. Here they 

 have no notion of fair play, and in a moment you 

 would be hustled, beaten, stoned, and all as piti- 

 lessly as a welsher on an English racecourse ; and 

 if, half dead, you escaped without a knife between 

 your ribs, you might indeed think yourself 

 lucky. 



The most interesting shops to me were the fur- 

 riers, in which I saw an enormous number of 

 lynxes' skins, brought, so they said, from the Black 

 Sea coast ; and the armourers' shops, in which with 

 the roughest tools they executed most elaborate 

 and beautiful handles in silver and black for blades 

 of every quality and date. 



Having purchased my costume nnd seen as 

 much of the bazaar as I cared to, I returned to 

 Tiflis proper, and here the streets were fast filling 



