110 TRANSCAUCASIA. 



maddening. The luggage, whicli is generally stnfted 

 under the rope-seat, has, as well as the seat, to be re- 

 arranged six or eight times a day, as the conveyance is 

 changed at every station. Nothing of glass can be carried 

 without breakage, and if the road be muddy, clothes 

 and face are covered in five minutes with a thick layer of 

 dirt. Three horses draw these traps; the two trace- 

 horses are quickly fastened on either side ; the centre 

 animal goes between the shafts, and over its neck is 

 fastened the ' duga,' or wooden arch, to which one or 

 more bells are attached — probably intended, by their inces- 

 sant clang, to drown the groans of the suffering travellers. 

 Scarcely a stage passed without our having to stop in 

 the middle of it, to rearrange this clumsy structure, in 

 the beauty and fitness of which the native drivers seem 

 to have implicit belief, and to which they attach a sort of 

 mystic importance. 



Such are the carts which the Imperial Government pro- 

 vides for its couriers ! Its traditional policy seems to have 

 been to develope towns, and supply every luxury and amuse- 

 ment for a swarm of official drones ; while commerce and 

 industry were discouraged by the neglect of the communica- 

 tions of the country, for which the Government, by keeping 

 in its own hands the entire management of the roads and 

 postal system, had made itself responsible. What provision 

 it does make I have endeavoured partially to show ; but it 

 would fill a volume to narrate all our own experiences, 

 and the stories we heard from other, and partly Russian 

 sources, both of the badness of the roads, and of the 

 insolence, ignorance of truth, and rapacity of the postal 

 officials. Imagine a place like Tifiis, the residence of a 

 brother of the Czar, a town of 80,000 inhabitants, with a 

 large European society, and an opera-house, uncomiected 

 by any pretence of road with the Black Sea coast, the 



