104 



TRANSCAUCASIA. 



his experience, lie thought would certainl}^ each take us a 

 month to vanquish. So anxious was he to put us in the 

 right way, that he drew for us an itinerary, the fatal ob- 

 jection to which was that no one but a Russian could 

 expect to survive sixty miles a day, for five weeks, of post- 

 travelling- over the steppes, swamps, and boulders which 

 are called roads in the Caucasus. The General's kindness 

 did not end here, for he constituted himself our ' cicerone,' 



The G-eurgian Castle, Tiflis. 



and took us a round of all the sigrhts in Tiflis. From the 

 Persian quarter we climbed, by a very steep road, to the 

 Botanical Garden, which is * sown in a wrinkle of the 

 monstrous hill ' overhanging the town. The southward- 

 facing slo]3e of a narrow glen has been cut and built up 

 into terraces, planted with rare trees and shrubs, and con- 

 nected by vine-trellised paths and flights of steps. Over- 



