254 



THE NATIONAL GEOGRAPHIC MAGAZINE 



Photograph by M. O. Williams 



TWO TEKKE TURKOMANS OX THE STEPS OP THE MILITARY MUSEUM AT GEOK TEPE 



The Russians insult the Turkomans with pictures of the Russian victory and Tekke 

 cowardice, but there is about as much cowardice in a Turkoman as there is milk in a milk- 

 snake. One of these fighting men wears the Georgian Cross (see page 259). 



beard evidently meant it, and the veiled 

 figure opposite him should have quailed 

 before the idea of widowhood. But she 

 didn't. That was one of the incidents I 

 saw in connection with the election of the 

 Transcaucasian Government in Tiflis on 

 the day that ill-starred little republic was 

 born. One of the wives of a prominent 

 Tatar had voted a different ticket from 

 the one her husband had advised, and, 

 womanlike, once the ballot was safely and 

 secretly deposited, told her husband about 

 it. Such are some of the primer steps 

 toward modernism in Georgia. 



High over the city circled an aero- 

 plane, with its clatter drawing the atten- 

 tion of the people. The day was clear 

 and bright and the streets crowded. 

 Thousands gazed aloft to watch the move- 

 ments of the machine. It crossed the 

 Kura, which divides the shoestring city 

 along its banks, passed over the Golovin- 



ski Prospekt, and turned toward its 

 hangar to the east. 



Then suddenly there fell from the plane 

 a dazzling shower of huge snowflakes, 

 which grew and grew, volplaning and 

 whirling until a few reached the out- 

 stretched hands of the people below. The 

 Bolshevik occupants were bombing the 

 election crowds with Bolshevik literature. 

 Electioneering in Tiflis was not without 

 its picturesque side. 



In the theaters on the night before, the 

 lights had scarcely flashed on after the 

 first act when from a dozen places in the 

 top gallery showers of flyers were dropped 

 onto the heads and laps of the gaily 

 dressed throng. Through the day auto- 

 mobiles, with their exhausts roaring and 

 decorated with the numbers of the differ- 

 ent political parties, dashed through the 

 fine streets, campaigning for votes. 



Posters were pasted to almost every- 



