RETURN TO TIFLIS. 337 



clenched hands, thumps and smacks you, pulls out 

 your different joints and replaces them, making your 

 fingers crack in a marvellous manner, and finally dries 

 and leaves you, feeling as if you had just had the 

 gloves on with the celebrated Professor Bat Mullins, 

 of Panton Street renown. Meanwhile, my servant 

 had taken away every rag I possessed, and in a 

 state of happy, cleanly nudity I sat awaiting that 

 greatest of boons to a weary wayfarer, a clean shirt 

 and an invitation to breakfast. Both arrived in 

 due time, and feeling once more that I was a few 

 steps removed from a Tartar beggar in appearance 

 as well as in feelings, I betook myself to an Eng- 

 lishman's house, vowing that, if I could help it, my 

 experiences of Russian post- travelling should never 

 go beyond my last stoppage at the sulphur baths. 



The snowfall that now enveloped Tiflis was 

 so the inhabitants told me the heaviest they could 

 ever remember, and certainly never could Tiflis 

 have looked better than it did under the white pall 

 that hid all its foulness and lent such eclat to 

 whatever beauty it possesses. For me, too, the 

 snowfall had its advantages, in affording me an 

 opportunity of witnessing the pursuit of the ante- 

 lope on horseback as practised by the Tartars of 

 Karias. About two score well-mounted men. ;ill 

 carrying rifles on their shoulders and a powerful 

 greyhound on their horse in front of the saddle, 

 started at an early hour for the steppe. Having 



7. 



