1835.] Georgia, Persia, and Mesopotamia. 615 



Tiflis in sixteen days. The distance is nearly a thousand miles! The 

 cows yield about half a gallon of milk daily, and the sheep and goats 

 assist to supply the dairy : cheese being always made of their milk. 

 They use the wild artichoke to turn the milk, and their cheeses are 

 made up into small round cakes. Their butter is well flavoured, but 

 not of much consistency. It is churned by putting the cream into 

 a goat's skin suspended to the side of a tent, and tossed to and fro. 

 The Bedouins practise the same method. " Dans un peau de chevre, 

 encore garnie de ses poils ils mettent le lait, comme dans une outre. 

 Une femme Bedouine apres avoir fortement noue les deux bouts, 

 et suspendu le tout a une branche d'arbre, en secouant l'outre de 

 toute sa force, parvient a faire le beurre." — (Castellan. Moeurs des 

 Ottomans, t. 6, p. 60.) 



Several tribes have five thousand sheep : they seldom kill any, but 

 subsist chiefly on milk and butter. Hence, the number is continually 

 increasing. 



The Kurdish villages, although small, are very numerous, and all 

 built in the same style, of large unhewn stones, which have no bind- 

 ing material. They consist of an outer and inner room only, having 

 a floor, and walls plastered with mud, and a roof formed by cross 

 beams of wood, covered with reeds, or straw matting, and over that 

 again, a thick covering of mud. They are generally seated upon the 

 declivity of a mountain, and some idea may be formed of the steep- 

 ness of their streets from this peculiarity of position, that the top of 

 one house forms an exact level with the bottom of the one above it; 

 and each house having a door that opens into this space ; the roof 

 of one dwelling forms a level walk for its next, or upper neighbour, 

 where the inhabitants sit to enjoy their chibouques. We remained 

 the night in one of these hamlets, and left shortly after day-break 

 for the capital. After descending with great abruptness for ten 

 miles, crossing several mountain torrents that wriggled over our 

 track like serpents, we entered a gorge in the mountains, and com- 

 menced our ascent up the wildest mountains I had ever seen. The 

 morning was unusually sultry ; and during our journey, a dreadful 

 storm of hail and sleet, accompanied by thunder and vivid lightning, 

 broke upon us. We were soon enveloped in a thick mist, which 

 brought to my remembrance the situation of the ten thousand 

 Greeks under Zenophon, during their ever memorable retreat over 

 these very mountains. They were hid from the enemy by a mist 

 similar in density to the one we here experienced ; for it was with 

 difficulty we could at times discern objects at ten yards' distance. 

 Having reached a considerable height, a sublimely vast extent of 

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