TRANSCAUCASIA. 



CHAPTER IV. 



TRANSCAUCASIA.* 



On the Black Sea — Trebizonde — Eival Interpreters— Paul— Eunning a 

 Muck — Batoum — The Caucasus in Sight — Landing at Poti — The Eion 

 Steamer — A Drive in the Dark — Kutais — Count Leverschoff^Splendid 

 Costumes — Mingrelian Princesses — Azaleas — The Valley of the Quirili — 

 A Post Station — The Georgian Plains — Underground Villages — Gori — 

 First View of Kazbek— Tiflis— The Hotel d'Europe— The Streets — 

 Silver and Pur Bazaars — - Maps — German Savants — The Botanical < 

 Garden — The Opera — Officialism Eampant — -A False Frenchwoman — 

 A Paraclodnaia — The Postal Sjstem in Eussia. 



The weather on tlie Black Sea was cold and rainj, but 

 tlie water was never really rough. Half our fellow-pas- 

 sengers were English — an engineer with his wife, and two 

 young men going out to aid in the construction of the 

 Poti-Tiflis railroad. Our other companions were a young 

 Russian colonel, a little man who talked familiarly and 

 affectionately of ' votre John Stuart Mill,' on the strength 

 of his having read his ' Utilitarianism,' and some Armenian 

 merchants, more or less uninteresting. 



On Monday we called at Samsoun, and on Tuesday 

 afternoon arrived at Trebizonde, where the boat remains 

 twenty-six hours to take in cargo. The weather was vHe, 

 the rain falling lij e a waterspout, and we were glad to 

 escape from the rather rough and monotonous Russian 

 fare, and the uneasy roll of the steamer, to a nice little hotel 

 on shore, kept by an Italian, who had served in the Sardinian 



* The political division of the Eussian empire ruled by the Viceroy of the 

 Caucasus, extends from the Manytch, on the north, to the Araxes on the south. 

 The provinces on the north of the great Caucasian chain are called Cis-Caucasia, 

 those on the south Trans-Caucasia. Eussians and natives of the country never 

 restrict the name Caucasus to the mountain-range. 



