POTI. 483 



fortunate circumstance, as, owing to the shallowness of the 

 water at this season, the ordinary boats cannot get up to 

 Orpiri, and the passengers and cargo are transferred half- 

 way fi'om one boat to another. At Poti we went to the 

 ' Hotel Jacquot,' which is clean and comfortable. No reader 

 of ' Martin Chuzzlewit ' could fail to be struck with the 

 resemblance to Eden of this miserable spot. Its situation, 

 in a swamp rather below the waters of the Rion, which 

 are only prevented by embankments from sweeping away 

 the place, combines almost every disqualification for a 

 commercial town. The hotels (there are three), the office 

 of the steamboat company, and a few houses of the better 

 sort, are planted at irregular intervals near the quay. 

 Behind them is the main and only street, which consists 

 of a causeway running between two rows of log-shanties, 

 raised on piles above pools of fetid water, and ending 

 abruptly in a dismal swamp. Every road has two large 

 ditches, brimming with stagnant slime on either side, 

 crossed by little bridges, which, as one of our party found 

 by unpleasant experience, are easily missed in the dark. 

 What wonder that fever and ague are written in the faces 

 of the dismal gathering of officers and employes, to whom, 

 in what the residents are pleased to call a public garden, a 

 melancholy band nightly discourses doleful tunes ! All the 

 real merriment and music of Poti is confined to the frogs, 

 and they, to judge by the noise they make, lead a merry 

 life of it. All night long their ceaseless chorus resounds 

 through the place, and it is asserted by the inhabitants — • 

 though I cannot wholly credit the story — that the sound, 

 when the wind blows that way, is audible even at Constan- 

 tinople. 



So long as Turkey keeps Batoum, Russia is reduced to 

 make the best of Poti, as the port of the Caucasus. Soulc- 

 houm-Kale, which seems at first sight preferable, is little less 



