Photo from George Kennan 

 A BRIDGE-SPANNED TORRENT 



"The ravines through which these bridge-spanned torrents flow make travel across the 

 country extremely difficult. Getting out of one and into another involves four or five hours 

 of climbing or sliding on steep zigzags, and a ride of lo miles across two or three of them 

 is a hard day's journey" (see text, page 1117). 



to be so unfamiliar with west Europeans 

 that it would be extremely hazardous to 

 go among them without an armed escort. 



Most of the Russians whose advice 

 and assistance I asked assured me that 

 my plan of crossing the great range and 

 descending into the valley of Kakhetia 

 was wholly impracticable. ''We our- 

 selves," they said, ''would hesitate to 

 undertake such a trip, and how can you — 

 an American without knowledge or ex- 

 perience — expect to make it" ? 



All my efforts to get guides, horses, 

 and interpreters were fruitless, and for 

 a whole week I wandered around the 

 bazaars and narrow, muddy streets of 

 Timour Khan Shoura, waiting for some- 



thing to turn up. Nothing, however, did 

 turn up, and how to turn something up 

 I did not know. 



A GEORGIAN NOBLE 



My patience and self-confidence were 

 fast becoming exhausted when I acci- 

 dentally heard one morning that a certain 

 Prince Djordjadzi — a Georgian nobleman 

 in the Russian service — had just arrived 

 in Timour Khan Shoura and would leave 

 there on the following day for his home 

 in the trans-Caucasian valley of the Ala- 

 zan. He had a full force of guides and 

 interpreters and a large armed escort, 

 and his intention was to ride through the 

 wildest, least known part of the eastern 



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