INTENDED IMPROVEMENTS AT TIFLIS. 
149 
reduced to the most wretched expedients of personal discomfort 
and misery. As it may be supposed, the most serious maladies 
are engendered during the prevalence of these floods; and the 
damps which remain when the waters have long passed away, 
hardly ever leave the saturated walls and flooring till the warm 
season has very far advanced. At such moments as this I have 
been describing, well might travellers call it the black and dreary 
valley. 
Such was Tiflis in the year 1817. But if the plans of the 
present Governor-general, for rectifying the construction of 
houses, be carried fully into effect, such will not be Tiflis, a 
few years hence. What His Excellency has already accomplished 
in the improvements of the public buildings, give a good speci¬ 
men of the future fairer aspect of the place; and even those 
alterations have rendered the Georgian capital so superior to 
what it was a dozen years ago, that the travelling merchant can 
hardly recognise its bazars and caravansary to be the same. 
The skies were beginning to clear towards the 7th of Novem¬ 
ber (O. S.), the time when I intended proceeding on my journey; 
and I began making preparations for leaving a place where I had 
become acquainted with many objects of interest, and enjoyed 
much social pleasure, from the kindness of the Governor-general, 
and the attentions of his suite. Rough and hazardous as the 
road had been, over which I had passed, more rugged and dan¬ 
gerous were the ways which lay before me; hence, it was ne¬ 
cessary I should dispose of my carriage at Tiflis, and arrange 
my baggage so as to convey it on the backs of horses. The 
General of Cossacks, to whose charge my venerable friend the 
Attaman had most particularly commended my safety, provided 
a non-commissioned officer’s escort to attend me to the utmost 
