I arrived at Kertch in an opportune moment, for on the day of my arrival the little town welcomed back one of its heroes in the Turkish war, and as he was an old friend of mine, I came in for my share of the merry-making. My friend and I were invited to a large supper-party, composed of all the young blood of Kertch, and were together fÊted, he as warrior, I as sportsman, both fresh from a common field of glory (and discomfort) in Asia.

Of the Turkish war our friend had little to say, except that the discomfort had seemed to him greater than the danger, as the Turks were execrable marksmen with the rifle, and though capital artillerymen, none of their shells would explode. This I have heard frequently both before and since.

The arrival of the old steamship ‘Kotzebul’ on Sunday put an end to all these gaieties as far as I was concerned; and leaving behind me a whole mass of invitations unaccepted from my hospitable friends at Kertch, I once more sailed for the Caucasus.

From Kertch to Poti we had a fair and pleasant voyage, over a sea calm and still as an inland lake, past a coast where mountains in the background sink into hills in the foreground, and the hills themselves run right down into the sea; while almost from the point where they touch the waves with their feet the forest starts upwards and clothes them to the very summit. On November 26, at Sukhoum, the skies were blue and cloudless, many of the trees still in their green foliage, some double-petalled wild roses in full bloom, and the temperature that of an English summer.

Sukhoum itself though, in spite of the lovely weather, is but a sorry sight. The houses are most of them ruins; the town is full of soldiers camping amongst the ruins and making confusion worse confounded; the gardens are already half absorbed in the wild growth that surrounds them; the splendid avenues of ‘bignonia catalba’ which once graced the town have been ruthlessly cut down, though useless I should think even for firewood; there is no church left, and I saw very few women. The streets are overgrown everywhere with belladonna, one of the commonest weeds here. But whilst meditating over the desolation of Sukhoum, and gathering its wild roses, the whistle of the steamer broke unpleasantly on my ear, and my friend and myself had the nearest escape of being left behind for a week, by the end of which time we should have had enough of Sukhoum I think.

On board the steamer I met a certain Col. G., a very well-known and successful sportsman, not only in the Caucasus but throughout Russia. He had spent three years between Elbruz and Sukhoum, and had devoted a great deal of his time to sport, but admitted that he knew very little of the country yet. It was his opinion that this district is richer in game than any other part of the country; and if by game you mean only large game, I entirely agree with him. In this comparatively small area he himself had either shot or seen shot aurochs (bos urus), ‘ollen’ (Russian red deer), roebuck, ibex, chamois, wild goat, mountain sheep (tÛr), leopards, lynxes, otters, bears (of which he too said there were at least two kinds), jackals, and here, and here only, the black wolf. This is a beast of which I have heard frequent mention on the Black Sea coast, but have never seen it. It is probably only a slight variety of the ordinary animal, but I think, from frequent mention made of it, that it must be a variety which is more or less prevalent in this country. The best place for aurochs now is between the Pscebai and upper Zelenduk rivers, according to my friend. Col. G. told me of another animal, which he declares exists in the Caucasus on the Kuban river, to wit the beaver; but as I never heard of this creature’s existence there from any of the natives of the Kuban districts, or from any naturalist, Russian or other, whom I have since met, I think this last statement of the gallant colonel’s must be taken ‘cum grano salis.’

Arrived at Poti, I found a very fair hotel for such a town, managed by an obliging old Frenchman; and though Poti is built on an undrained swamp, I escaped without the fever. I was met at Poti by an Englishman, who was at that time acting vice-consul for Great Britain, and was himself employed as agent to a large timber firm in England. To this gentleman, Mr. Carroll, I owe many thanks for his useful hints for my journey. The timber of which he exports most from the Black Sea coast, is, he tells me, box, of which large quantities are found in the adjacent forests; and the burr of the walnut-tree, an excrescence in appearance rather like a huge fungus, but hard and of most beautifully grained wood, out of which the thin layers are cut, which are used in England for veneering, etc. The cost of finding and transporting these woods from the forests in the interior of the Caucasus, between which and Poti communication is difficult, renders them extremely expensive.

From Poti to Tiflis I had two English-speaking fellow-travellers—a German landowner and an English mining engineer going to the former’s property near Kutais to prospect for coal, of which there is supposed to be a large supply there. The coal, they say, is of good quality and in seams of considerable thickness. This engineer, who had seen a great deal of the Caucasus, assured me, in common with many others, that though not in sufficiently large quantities to be of any serious importance, there was undoubtedly gold in most of the small river beds between Batoum and DuapsÈ. From Poti to Rion the scenery is not very attractive, the first part being merely a cutting through a marsh forest, where all the growth is too rank, and so dense as to spoil the individual development of the trees which compose it: it has consequently a mean, stunted appearance—besides looking horribly suggestive of fever. At Rion, however, we were cheered by the sight of glorious snow-capped peaks in the distance; and here, having met with a Government forester, to whom I told my story of wanderings in search of game, I was by him persuaded to stay and shoot for a few days in the neighbourhood of Kutais.

After unearthing the local forester, whose senior my friend was, we prepared ourselves for any emergency, by a liberal consumption of the inevitable tea and ‘papiros’ (cigarette), and then drove to an estate of Prince Mirsky’s, where we passed the night. In the morning we had a game drive, and killed a few roe deer, of which, Tartar fashion, these fellows eat the kidneys, still warm and raw, as soon as the beast was killed. I had the good fortune to kill a very large wolf as my own share of the bag, and a very handsome fellow he appeared when I first saw him, with his fore feet planted on an old stump and his hackles all up, looking savagely over his shoulder in the direction of the yelping curs which had disturbed him. He seemed a good deal more inclined to fight than to run, I thought. His coat was of that strange colour that I have so often noticed in the hares of the Crimea about the same time of year—a silver grey, turning at different points to what you might almost call rose pink.

Thanking my friends for the sport, and reflecting that an utter stranger in England would be very unlikely to meet with such random hospitality, I resumed my journey to Tiflis next day. The second half of the journey is far more interesting than the first, and in places the scenery reminds the traveller of Switzerland. The old town of Suram is one of the most picturesque glimpses on the way,—a huge ruin of a rough kind of castle standing on a little eminence, with the cottages of its dependent town brooding, chicken-like, under the shadow of its wing. The station, which is the end of the railway journey from Poti to Tiflis, is by no means Tiflis, as I found to my cost, but is put as far from the outskirts of the German colony, which forms a continuation of Tiflis beyond the KÛr, as it well could be. Tiflis, even by starlight, after a long, dull journey, and seen from a droshky, is a sight not to be forgotten. You feel in a moment that the town you are now in is as distinct from any you have ever seen before as anything well can be. In spite of the Grand Duke’s presence and the sober little German colony, European civilisation is still only a resident stranger in the streets of Tiflis. The Tartar, Georgian, and Persian are all natural, and in keeping with the place, but the occasional high hat of Bond Street persuasion or Russian uniform is entirely out of harmony with the surroundings.

As we crossed the Kura bridge we were met by a long string of camels, and I was much impressed by my first meeting with these weird, soft-footed monsters, pacing through the silent starlit street, with their heads almost on a level with the roofs of the one-storied houses on either side, every now and then giving a low roar, but save for this moving on between bales like little towers, mute and noiseless as ghosts.

On this, my first night at Tiflis, I had little time to spend in admiring or wondering at the picturesque medley of men and things all round me. All my time was more than filled with hotel hunting. Not a single hotel in the town had a room unoccupied, though I tried more hotels in that one night in Tiflis than I ever imagined the whole Caucasus possessed collectively. The cause of this was simply that the Lord Lieutenant was about to leave Tiflis next morning, and all the gay world of the Caucasus was in town to bid him farewell.

At last I found a resting-place in the worst inn’s worst room, high up next to the rafters that supported the roof, without any furniture, even the bed being represented only by the post-house couch, two feet too short for my legs. However, if my room had its disadvantages by night, it had its advantages by day, for in the morning the view from my fourth story (the only fourth story, I should think, in Tiflis) was superb.

The town lies clustered round the banks of the river KÛr, a broad stream, with steep banks where it passes through the town. Over its dark waters rise tiers of flat-topped houses with external balconies, where the ladies take the air and smoke their cigarettes in the summer evenings, if their husbands cannot afford to take them to the fashionable summer resort of Tiflis in the hills. Here and there fine modern buildings of European character mar the uniformly Asiatic nature of the scene, while in the streets splendid carriages run into rough log-carts on huge wooden wheels dragged slowly along by half-tamed buffaloes. Camels look pityingly down at you with mild, sad eyes, as they stalk past; Cossacks and gentlemen in the latest Parisian costume jostle each other on the pavement; at the street corners sit ferocious figures with moustaches several inches long, in sheepskin headgear, literally one-fourth the size of themselves, engaged in the peaceful occupation of embroidering slippers or cushions, which are afterwards exposed for sale in Abkhasian serais standing side by side with shops wherein the wares are fresh from the boulevards of Paris; and everywhere throughout this strange scene glide the Georgian women in their white mufflers, which resemble nothing so much as a sheet wound round their persons, showing only their faces and a few inches of many-coloured skullcap at the top. Here and there you see a Tiflis water-carrier with his skins of precious fluid carried on his horse’s back; a Persian selling hawks, or a band of Swanetian minstrels in skullcaps of white felt. However, when I first looked out from my lofty post of vantage on the morning after my arrival, Tiflis was but barely awake, and the sights I have described above were only partly visible; the rest gradually appeared as the day got older.

As I sat on my balcony at six o’clock in the morning, with my glass of tea and that leathery ring of bread they call a ‘bublik,’ which forms the regular breakfast of a Russian, the only things stirring in the streets below were the ‘dworniks’ (watchmen), and a few lumbering peasants’ carts coming into the bazaar. I was thankful, when the day grew older and the streets more lively, to leave my room and go in search of something more like an English breakfast, before beginning the business of the day; and though I had some difficulty in getting the waiter to supply me with anything more solid than aËrated bread at such an early hour, I did eventually succeed in a capital hotel (the name of which I am sorry to have forgotten), which I thenceforth made my home.

My first business was, of course, to find out our English consul—a duty which, if travelling Englishmen always observed, would conduce materially to their comfort. It is besides a piece of courtesy which ought not to be neglected. To a Londoner, who does not know the way to any place, the first thing that suggests itself is to hail a cabman, whom he looks upon as an unfailing pilot. Acting on this belief in the unerring topographical knowledge of the race of Jehus, I hailed a droshky, and having carefully explained to the driver where I wanted to go, sank back in the cab, giving myself up in perfect trust to the guidance of my pilot, and rapidly forgetting everything but the scene in the streets we were passing through. A more perfect mÉlange than Tiflis is impossible. There are no two houses alike; there are no two groups of gossipers by the way speaking the same dialect; in every street there are a score of costumes belonging to different nationalities; and, as I afterwards found out, you can, by leaving these main thoroughfares, dive into yet another world and a worse Babel, by turning down towards the river and entering the bazaar.

Shops there seemed to be many and good; one of the best in the place being kept by a Scotchman. The most attractive to the European are those in which they sell Persian work, cushions, carpets, and arms. In making purchases in these, it is as well, however, to take a friend with you, who knows something of the wares offered for sale, as well as their approximate value, and the tricks of their vendors. By doing this I certainly in purchasing things to fit up a smoking-room at home spent barely 100l. in place of about 250l., the sum to which the original demands of the tradesmen for each separate item would have amounted. Nothing annoys a foreigner more, I think, than this enforced haggling over the price of every purchase.

But to hark back to my cabman. After driving me all over Tiflis, through the main street, up back slums that finally ended in waste hillside, and into squares which had no exit, and contained nothing but shops on a kind of second story—after hailing and haranguing some dozens of passers-by—he pulled up, and told me with much complacency there was no English consul, but that he would find me two or three other consuls, French, German, &c., if they would do as well. For a moment I was puzzled what to do, as my hotel-keeper had been unable to give me the address I wanted, and I hardly knew where else to ask for it now my Jehu had failed me. But a telegraph-post gave me an inspiration. Where those tall slim posts are, there must be an Englishman or a German not far off; and telling my cabby to drive to the telegraph station, I soon found all I wanted, as well as a kind friend in the person of the chief of the telegraphists, Herr GÜnzel.

Our consul, I found, was just the man to help me—an old Indian officer and shikaree, to whom all my wants were perfectly comprehensible. To Captain Lyall I owe much for his ever-ready help and hospitality. With him and Herr GÜnzel I passed the next few days, calling upon the dignitaries of Tiflis, presenting my letters of introduction, and obtaining all the information I could collect relative to Lenkoran and the game to be found there.

With one solitary exception (Prince Gagarin, once governor of the Lenkoran district) I was told by every one that large game abounded, and tigers were things of everyday occurrence. Alas! I listened to the many, and, in spite of my own conscience, closed my ears to the one. One Russian gentleman upon whom I called showed me a letter just received from an Englishman engaged in writing a monograph on crocuses, asking for his assistance to obtain certain bulbs of this flower supposed to exist at Lenkoran. I did my best, as I promised my friend I would do, to obtain some bulbs during my stay by the Caspian; but as there were no leaves above ground, and as the natives don’t take any notice of flowers, or know one from another, I was completely foiled in my attempt.

The number of musical instruments in the streets of Tiflis would lead one to believe that the population is a most musical one. My old enemy, the barrel-organ, turned up here in great force, especially about the German colony. The Armenians seem most fond of it, and during my short stay in Tiflis I twice saw a droshky containing a couple of Armenians evidently on the spree, with organ and organ-grinder crowded in on the top of them, playing away his hardest, while, with beaming faces which plainly testified that they were doing the correct thing according to their lights in the best style, they rattled through the streets. Those who know these people will tell you that it is their favourite folly, when they have had a little too much to drink, to engage an organ-grinder by the day, drive him about playing over them, until they have called at so many ‘cabaks’ on the way as to render their seats in the droshky insecure, and then, alighting at their favourite drinking-den, enthrone their grinder on the table round which they sit, and to the tunes of their beloved instrument succumb gloriously to the united charms of Bacchus and Apollo.

Next morning they go home from the gutter with a consciousness of having spent a happy day, as a happy day ought to be spent, and regard its memory as a thing to be proud of. It seems a strange thing, but in Russia and amongst these people the peasants envy a drunkard instead of pitying him. Drunkenness is to them a highly desirable condition, and shame for it they cannot understand. The most popular Englishman who ever lived and travelled amongst the Caucasian tribes owed his popularity entirely to the enormous quantity of strong drink he could absorb without doing himself any harm. The Circassians themselves have an almost incredible facility for drinking large quantities of wine without any apparent harm.

A propos of wine, the wine of the country, or rather one of the wines of the country, the Kachketinsky wine, both red and white, is admirable, and far superior to any of the imported wines to be met with at Tiflis. There is another wine which is a good deal drunk by the ladies, called ‘Donskoi.’ It is something like Moselle, red in colour and unbearably sweet to the palate. The people drink vodka and rough native wine in their ‘cabaks’ and ‘duchans,’ as well as a rough kind of beer, very sweet, and more like what mead must have been than like any beer of to-day. Tiflis itself is full of beer-halls, but these are rather for the military and the Germans than for the natives. These Germans are, I fancy, an unpopular race in the Caucasus as well as in Russia, not from any inherent vice in their natures, but from the fact that, being more civilised than their neighbours, they utterly refuse to mix with them, living apart in their colonies, with their own society, school, and church, prospering beyond any other settlers, and by their staid sobriety and orderly, thrifty life, forming a contrast to the life around them too favourable to themselves to be pleasing to their neighbours. ‘Nemets’ and ‘colbasnik’—dummy and sausage-eater—are the sobriquets in which they rejoice.

On the fourth day after my arrival at Tiflis the town, in spite of its novelty and ever-varying scenes, began to pall upon me, and with some difficulty I arranged a shooting expedition to the neighbouring steppe of KariÂs. Here the Grand Duke holds his shooting parties, and enormous are the bags made, though the festivities are of such a nature as one would imagine to interfere considerably with the shooting. But, alas! for us, there were to be no royal forests with innumerable beaters and any quantity of boars and tall red deer. Our hunting grounds were the wide steppelands outside the viceregal preserves, where antelopes (subgutturosÆ) and all the ruffians who are wanted by the Government at Tiflis do mostly congregate.

Early, then, in the morning, while the stars were making up their minds to retire for the day, and a faint pink was just stealing into the sky, our party rattled out of Tiflis; the English consul and myself on horseback, the rest of our party on wheels. Our way lay through the Tartar bazaar, where the fiery-bearded Persians and astute Armenians were already astir, and then over the broad KÛr, and through lands which but for the artificial irrigation of which the KÛr is the source would be absolutely barren. On our road we met a quaint cavalcade, if that may be called a cavalcade which contained but one horse: a vast train of donkeys, some brown, some white, several hundreds in number, part bearing bales of merchandise, and part their owners. Here and there amongst the troop a black conical tent ambled along, nothing visible but the tent with four thin legs trotting along under it. This was a Tartar or Persian on his donkey, his ‘bourka’ round his neck, hanging in loose folds to his animal’s knees, and completely concealing man and beast. The caravan was on its way to Persia, and was the only one of the kind I ever saw, though trains of camels and carts are of frequent occurrence between Batoum and Tiflis.

KariÂs, or the black summer, is a name which this steppeland has earned for itself by the excessive virulence of the fever which raged there after the introduction of artificial irrigation. It is some thirty-five or forty versts from Tiflis, and, besides being the preserve of the Grand Duke and the refuge of Tiflis outlaws, it is the home of several bands of Tartars and one German planter.

It was to the home of this latter that we turned our horses’ heads, after being ferried over the broad dark waters of the KÛr. All the road between Tiflis and this ferry had been bare and uninteresting: low grey hills, looking parched and lifeless on our right, a grey dusty steppe at our feet, and on our left the bare unlovely banks of the KÛr, with here and there a huge vulture sitting gorged and sullen on its shore. By the ferry a belt of low woodland lent some interest to the scene; but this was left behind as soon as the river was crossed; and far away on every hand stretched the level steppeland, so bare of succulent herbage as to appear anything but pleasant pastures for the many flocks of sheep and herds of antelope that roam over its surface.

An hour’s ride, straining our eyes in a vain endeavour to catch a first glimpse of the antelopes, whose home we were invading, brought us to a canal with a bridge and toll-house or something of that nature; and the bridge once crossed, the clamour of a dozen curs and the appearance of several Tartars advised us of our arrival at our journey’s end. The planter himself came to meet us—a young fellow speaking many languages as well as his own, a mere boy amongst the worst-looking gang of labourers man ever put eyes upon, yet managing them fairly well, and making his venture pay. His home was a mere hut, utterly destitute of any of the comforts or refinements of that civilisation to which he had apparently been brought up; and it would indeed need to be a lucrative venture which should tempt a man to lead the life our friend Adolphe led. He had been made a magistrate by the Tiflis Government, with exceptional powers and privileges; but, as he himself told us, he was a magistrate merely in name, unable to carry out any measure he might deem necessary, utterly powerless to punish or bring to punishment, and so used to the evils by which he was surrounded as to have grown perfectly callous to them. Murder, horse-stealing, and every other crime are of almost daily occurrence. However openly committed, it is impossible to convict, as none dare witness against the perpetrators of the crime, knowing full well that, should they do so, they would live in hourly danger of their lives from that time forth. And even in the rare cases in which the crimes have been fully proved, and the criminals safely conveyed to Tiflis, they have been set free again on one plea or another, until the name even of justice has lost all meaning in the land. In the six or seven years during which my host has lived at KariÂs he has had his horse shot under him on one occasion, has had a bullet put through his bourka on another, and on a third, whilst riding into Tiflis, a bullet fired from the rifle of a concealed assassin broke the jaw of the servant who accompanied him. If he makes himself obnoxious to any of his neighbours in the execution of his magisterial duties, his best horses are mutilated, his cattle shot, or his house fired. Labour is so dear and labourers so scarce that he cannot afford to choose those he employs, and though a man comes to him red-handed, he must engage him and be content. Thus it happens that his own men are the veriest scum of Tiflis.

One fellow who acted as my guide was wanted by the Tiflis police for murder, and a speech made by my host himself illustrated, I thought, as well as anything could, the utter lawlessness of KariÂs. ‘We generally have mutton,’ he said, ‘though, as I have no sheep and don’t buy it, I don’t know where it comes from; some of my fellows steal it, I suppose.’ Raids upon sheep and cattle are of common occurrence, and free fights take place between the villages. The cattle stolen are generally driven across the river and sold at Elizabetpol. Every village is, I believe, theoretically responsible for the misdoings of each of its inhabitants; and thus a man’s neighbours are to some extent converted into amateur policemen, who watch and report his deeds. But as a crime is rarely the result of one individual’s enterprise, the culprit is rarely run to ground; and even if he is, the village pays an inadequate fine, and there is an end of it.

Tiflis itself is under military law, and at the moment when I left it for KariÂs three men were under sentence of death for a glaring outrage committed in broad day in the streets. Two were to be hanged, and one, in consideration of his rank as a nobleman, though filling a menial position, was to be shot.

But the stories of the lawlessness of the Caucasus might be continued ad infinitum, were it not that they would become monotonous, and, as our consul himself remarked, the state of the country is so bad that an honest account of it would not find credence in England. I am tempted to say more on this subject than I might otherwise have done, because travellers who have recently written on the Caucasus, having kept much to the post-roads, and, luckily, escaped molestation upon them, have, I think, given too peaceful a colouring to their picture of the country through which they drove. In another place I may be able to say more of the safety of the Russian post-roads.

That the fever from which KariÂs derived its evil name was of an exceedingly virulent nature may be imagined from the fact that in one summer, out of a village of three hundred inhabitants, only nine were left alive. The whole place seems plague-stricken in summer, even the river having its disease, in the shape of a small worm, which, burrowing into the skin of those who bathe in it, eats away whole joints, until the part affected has the appearance of being withered. One man amongst those we saw at KariÂs had a withered finger-joint, which he attributed to this cause.

About ten o’clock we rolled ourselves up in our bourkas, thanking our stars that we were not settlers in the KariÂs steppe, though as a hunting-ground it is in every way desirable. Before turning in we were warned that we ought to be up early, and, thanks to the too lively nature of our couches, we were up long even before we need have been. At one o’clock the misty air feels chill and comfortless; we were glad to busy ourselves vigorously in preparing our horses for the day’s sport; and, though we felt like blind men following the blind, we blundered on at a quick step after our guide into the darkness that encircled us. After going some three versts, that seemed to us thirty, we took our guide’s advice, and, hobbling our horses, rolled ourselves in our bourkas, to lie waiting in the dark until the dim light stealing over the plains should show us the antelopes browsing within rifle-shot. But all our dreams had to be of the waking sort, for the intense chill made it too cold to sleep, and, though the grey dawn showed us no confiding herds, it was none the less welcome on that account.

Gradually around us there grew out of the darkness a plain flatter than all fancy can fashion, with never a tree nor a bush to break the monotony, or to afford concealment to any living thing. Round this there rose slowly on the sight a chain of low hills, with the river and the low mountains running at right angles to them; and on the other two sides steppe unbroken to the horizon. And now we rose and shook away the chill and the torpor it had brought into our blood, and with a pang of regret for that tub which circumstances so often denied, we buckled our bourkas on to our horses, slipped cartridges into our rifles, and spreading out into line, shaped our course across the still dim steppe for the low hills beyond.

As the dawn brightened we began to fancy ghost-like figures flitted away over the horizon into the unseen beyond, and at last we made out clearly a herd of some thirty antelopes. As they scudded, with short stiff tails erect over the plains—their horns for some reason unnoticeable in the distance—they looked to me quaintly like large grey dogs, with none of the deer-like attributes with which fancy had endowed them. Once we had found one band, the whole plains seemed to be alive with them, racing about from point to point or standing rigidly at gaze. To see them and to long for a nearer view was one thing, to obtain that view quite another. Fired at continually by the Tartars, hunted by the sheepdogs, though little hurt by either, they were as shy as any living thing could be. Stalking them was out of the question, and they made all attempts to surround them futile by breaking through the line almost before it began to close in on them. Nearer than five hundred yards we seemed doomed never to get, and after half a day’s ceaseless fag and a few wild shots at impossible ranges, my friend L. got disgusted, gave it up, and went home.

Towards mid-day we reached the low hills which bounded the plain on the side farthest from the canal and our home, and in my eagerness to secure an antelope I found I had lost sight of my companions with the horses. This troubled me very little, as I knew the way back; and if I did not find my friends before nightfall I felt quite capable of getting back on foot.

All over these plains near Tiflis, and in fact near any town in the Caucasus, large flocks of sheep are pastured; at KariÂs their shepherds are Tartars, whose pens and huts are in the low hills, at whose foot I had now nearly arrived; but that I did not know till later. Whilst still half a mile from the hills, I noticed a large herd of antelopes galloping for a point, to gain which they had to cross my line of march about a quarter of a verst in front of me. The herd looked as if it had been recently fired at, and some of its members were far behind the leaders, who had already crossed me. Hoping that these laggards would not perhaps swerve from the line of the rest, I ran as hard as I could to intercept them, and was rewarded by two long shots, which apparently did not tell.

Though the shots did not affect the antelopes they led me into a most unpleasant adventure. Browsing at some distance was an immense flock of sheep, and at the sound of my rifle a dozen of the huge grey dogs who guard these flocks came racing towards me, loudly manifesting their displeasure at my presence as they came. Often before had I been annoyed by these gaunt beasts in the Crimea and elsewhere, and even known them board a traveller’s cart as it passed through one of the Tartar villages they infested, but never before had I seen them look so much in earnest as they did to-day. They were all round me in a minute; and though still preserving a discreet distance, deafened me with their hideous din, and resolutely baffled all my attempts to break through their circle. Picking up some stones, I tried to free myself in that way from my tormentors, without any result, until a larger stone than the rest caught one of their number on the leg, and set him howling lustily.

Then the shepherds, who up till that moment had been enjoying the baiting of a stranger from the far distance, utterly careless of what might happen to the victim, set up a shout, and leaving their flock, one of them came towards the scene of action. The shepherds’ shout acted in the most inspiriting way on the attacking forces, which at once closed in on me, one brute flying straight at my throat, and meeting my rifle barrel full in his teeth, while another wilier cur, taking me in rear, made his teeth meet in one of the tendons behind my knee. This was more than flesh and blood could stand, so rather than be actually worried to death, I pulled out my revolver and let drive into two of my assailants; the brute who had bitten me from behind getting the first bullet. This sent the whole pack flying for the moment; so seizing the opportunity before they had time to rally again, I made for the shepherd, and being extremely savage collared him somewhat roughly, and gave him to understand that unless he called his brutes off and kept them off as long as I was within rifle-shot, I would put the next bullet into him. After a good deal of talking and violent gesticulation, I limped off, feeling much less sure of tramping gaily home in case I did not find the horses than I did half an hour before.

But my adventure was not to end here. For some time I tried to stalk different herds along the base of the hills, and was eventually led into the hills themselves by an antelope which I imagined was wounded. In following him I must have returned to a point in the hills opposite to the scene of my skirmish with the dogs; for before I knew where I was I stumbled upon three Tartars sitting round a fire, one of whom was my shepherd friend of the morning. Seeing me they jumped up and called to me to come to them. Their fire not being in my course and my antelope still in sight, I kept on my way. The request became a command; and then seeing how the wind lay, I mentally consigned them to a more tropical climate, and looked anxiously out for the horses. As I did not come to them, two of them came running to me, while the third, from the top of the hill, sent out a signal-cry, not unlike the Australian ‘cooey.’ My first thought was to stand and fight, for their intentions were obviously hostile; besides I knew that I should be made to account for the damage I had done their pack in self-defence that morning. But a moment’s thought was enough to show me that unless I meant to use my rifle, my chance against the four (for another appeared at once on the scene) would be extremely poor; so with a good start I took to my heels and ran. Up one hill and over its brow into the valley that separated it from another no bigger than itself,—from that to another and a third, the chase went on—the pursuers growing in numbers each time I looked back, until, when quite blown, I stopped to see whether my rifle would intimidate them, they had increased to over a dozen. A shot from my rifle did stop them for a moment or two; but before I was well at the bottom of the hill from which I fired I heard them coming on again. And here I began to feel things were really extremely serious for me. I had killed their dog—I had therefore little mercy to expect from them. I was dead beat, and my bitten leg made running all the more difficult. I had only half a dozen cartridges with me; and at the very best I could not hope to make a good fight of it, so poorly furnished with ammunition, against so many rascals with their blood up, in a place where there was no stone or bush to get behind. That they would make short work of me if they caught me I had little doubt; the quarrel would in their eyes justify any outrage, and my good rifle be an additional incentive to them to give me my quietus.

But here a double saved me. At the bottom of the little hill I was still on was a wide earth crack: into this I jumped, whilst my pursuers were still on the other side of the summit, and following the course of the chasm I doubled round the base of the hill a little way and then waited. Yelling like demons the Tartars came over the hill, and to my infinite relief, supposing me probably to have just topped the next rising ground, redoubled their exertions to overhaul me in the direction which they fancied I had taken. Once safely past me, I turned and ran back on my track for some distance, and then made for the plains. I am thankful to say that there I found my friends and the horses, and heard no more of either dogs or Tartars.

It was now getting late in the day. My friend G., disgusted with having toiled many hours and taken nothing, returned to Adolphe’s. Being still keen to secure at least one head as a souvenir of KariÂs, I kept my horse and the guide, to make one last effort before giving up the chase.

I had heard that by riding round and round a herd in ever-narrowing circles, a shot might sometimes be got from a nearer point than could otherwise be hoped for. Determined to leave no stone unturned to secure success, I tried this method, and after riding enough useless circles to have made both man and horse giddy, I at last got within four hundred yards of a small herd, which, standing with their heads up, were just preparing to break away again, when, trusting rather to my aim on foot than on horseback, I slipped out of the saddle, and, allowing for the distance, fired at the nearest buck. At the report the whole herd took to flight, the animal shot at bringing up the rear. Hardly hoping to effect anything, I fired again at him, and that time thought I saw him stagger as if the bullet struck him. But he recovered and went on; and after catching my horse I rejoined my guide and prepared to go home empty-handed.

On telling him, however, that I fancied I had hit the last antelope I fired at, he insisted on following the herd to see if we could not run down the wounded beast, which he thought would not go far. And he was right; for after a ride of less than a mile the antelope lay down, and, to my inexpressible delight, I was able to ride back with a fine young buck on my saddle. Both bullets had struck him behind, but had not smashed any large bones. In spite of my hard day and my swollen leg, that certainly was a moment of triumph in which I deposited my hardly-earned game in the midst of my half-incredulous friends. But after the way of the world, having vehemently assured me that if I worked for a week I should never get an antelope without dogs to help me, now, with the buck before them, they calmly insisted that it was only the luck of a tyro, and would be the first and last I should ever bag.

We stayed one more day at KariÂs, encouraged so to do by my success on the first day, and on this second day I was again in luck, though for the time I did not know it. After a long patient stalk, by utilising the only bit of slightly rising ground between myself and the horizon, I got within two hundred and fifty yards of three antelopes feeding. One of them, a splendid white-faced old buck, with a beautiful head, stood at gaze, looking towards me, and broadside on. I heard my bullet strike him as plainly almost as if it had struck a ringing bull’s-eye, and at that distance I expected to see him drop in his tracks. For a moment he fell on his knees, and then recovering, came straight towards my place of ambush, passing me at a terrific pace not more than thirty yards off. I fired the other barrel at him, but though I aimed well in front, I saw the bullet cut up the steppe in a line far behind him. Had I had my horse with me I might have had a chance; but as it was, though I ran some distance on foot to see if my prize would not drop after going a few hundred yards, I had to give it up, and the last I saw of the antelope that day was as he disappeared from sight with half a dozen sheepdogs at his heels. He was found next day pulled down and eaten by dogs or wolves; and luckily his head, which my friend Lyall obtained for me, was but little hurt. The ‘express’ bullet had caught him full in the centre of the shoulder blade, splitting it right and left. How any beast contrived to go as he did with such a wound I cannot understand.

Towards evening the antelopes, which had been a good deal harassed the last day or two, appeared to pack, and I once or twice came across large herds, one of which must have numbered from 150 to 300. These antelopes are, I believe, not a common variety, being found only between the Black Sea and the Caspian. The horns, which are curved back from the brow, start away from one another at the base, and curve in towards each other again at the tips. They are annulated from the base to the point at which the inward curve commences. The finest head in my possession has twenty-four rings on either horn, the horns measuring fourteen inches each. In this specimen the face is quite white from age, all the handsome black and tan markings of the younger bucks having faded out in this veteran. On my return to Tiflis I made another discovery with regard to this antelope, to wit, that of all the flesh I ever ate, its flesh is the most delicious.

Like all other game, antelope is very cheap in the bazaar; for though the Russians are far from being great sportsmen, every peasant has a gun, and dabbles in the chase for profit’s sake. Amongst the Russians in the north I doubt not there are many genuine sportsmen to be found—keen men, who relish a hard day’s work with a spice of danger in it, and who care very little for a large bag if it is not owing mainly to their own skill or exertions. But of the Russians whom I have met in three to four years in the Crimea and Caucasus, I cannot say so much. A Russian, though he invariably has some chaff for an Englishman on the score of tame pheasants, &c., is essentially either a pot-shot if a peasant, or a lover of battues if he be a gentleman. At KariÂs (the viceregal preserves) all the shooting is of the battue order. At another great sporting centre in the Caucasus, where a prince preserves the shooting and wild sheep and chamois abound, even the chamois are cleverly deluded into becoming victims of a drive. Deer-stalking, as we understand it, and chamois-hunting, as the hardy Swiss follow it, is a sport unknown here, except to the Tartars of Daghestan.

Although there is a plentiful supply of antelopes near Tiflis, all those that find their way into the bazaar are run down by mounted Tartars, none being stalked by Russians.

And yet, after their own fashion, Russians are very keen about sport. They love to organise a party, and are extremely hospitable to the stranger in making him one of it; but if that stranger be a keen sportsman, and has his mind full of visions of great game to be found and killed in their native fastnesses, the sight of the enormous supplies of food and wine deemed necessary for a three days’ campaign will strike despair into his heart. I am sorry to have to say it, because some Russians have been most kind to me; but a shooting expedition, as a rule, means an excuse for extraordinary eating and drinking, which is carried on at such a rate that, spite of the enormous supplies, the expedition generally has to return on the second day, having consumed everything.

On my return from antelope-shooting at KariÂs I had to spend four or five days at Tiflis as best I could, waiting until my papers were all ready and everything arranged for a start to Lenkoran. Having left almost all my European clothing at Kertch, I was hardly in a fit state to make much use of my introductions, so I passed my time in inspecting Tiflis and watching the life around me. And my time, thus employed, did not hang very heavily on my hands. First, there was the Museum, where Professor Radde did the honours in the most genial way, and added to the interest of the collection by anecdotes of his travels on the Amoor in the pursuit of his favourite study. The arrangement of some of the groups of natural objects is wonderfully artistic, the wild goats being represented in natural attitudes on their native rocks, and the vultures gorging on a dead camel in a way that is almost too realistic. But one of the handsomest things in the whole collection is a magnificent chandelier of the horns of the ‘ollen’ (Russian red deer) in the Professor’s dining-room. The sight of this led to my being told that at Borghom, the shooting-box of the Grand Duke, the whole of the furniture throughout is made entirely of red deer’s horns or other trophies of the chase.

After the Museum, the (to me) most interesting sight was the Tartar bazaar. Here it was my intention to purchase an entire native outfit in which I might travel without exciting attention, as I should have done had I worn European clothes, were it only my moleskin shooting-jacket. Our consul kindly volunteered to pilot me; but before starting on such an errand as the one in hand, certain preparations were necessary—amongst which huge boots reaching above the knee, to enable us to wade with comfort through the mud, and old clothes on our backs to blind the avaricious Armenians, were perhaps the chief. The Tartar bazaar is a network of extremely narrow streets lying near the KÛr, in which everything is sold and every race assists in the selling. Each street has its speciality: one is the bootmakers’ road, another the silversmiths’ or armourers’; here only vegetables and game are sold, there furs are the only commodities exposed for sale. And this system has its advantages, for you can in one glance take in all the goods of any particular kind which the bazaar contains. The whole choice of Tiflis is before you, and if the best there is not good enough for you, you can get no better elsewhere. But, on the other hand, the rivalry of the different shopkeepers becomes first amusing, and then distracting. At one moment you appear to be in danger of being torn to pieces by contending candidates for your custom; the next, there is every prospect of a free fight among the rivals themselves. But this gradually calms down; and then sticking to one shop, you ask for what you want. An article of the kind required is produced, the worst probably in stock, and held up to your eyes tenderly and admiringly by its owner, while he pours forth its praises in the most glowing terms of the East. You don’t like it, in spite of its being fit for the Prophet to wear; you don’t care about wearing it yourself, you want a better. Well, heaven knows what will please the gentleman, perhaps—and then as by inspiration the merchant remembers some other specimen of the article required, and producing it pours forth its eulogy in terms ten times as glowing as those which described the qualities of the first. This goes on as long as you will stand it, and then with a sigh the rascal produces something really worth having. You decide that it will do for you, and asking its price, are promptly told that to oblige you the vendor will take double its marketable value for it. My friend taught me the next step in the proceedings; and I must admit that it is a vast improvement on the old system of haggling, which requires half an hour at least to conclude. It is simply to offer half the price asked, and being refused, turn and walk deliberately out of the shop. The tradesman will mark each yard of your retreat by a fresh abatement of price or by specious offers. Take no notice, but pursue your way in obdurate silence, and the odds are ten to one that before you are out of sight, a little boy will overhaul you and bring you back to the shop to receive your purchase at half price.

One of the peculiarities of the traders is, that they are continually wanting to shake hands with you, give you a cigarette, or otherwise scrape acquaintance with their customer. As you stand bargaining with them while they sit cross-legged in their open shop front, they stop to call your attention to one or other of the innumerable gamins who infest the narrow thoroughfares of the bazaar, begging for alms. These I believe are the children of the shopkeepers, and you are expected to toss them a copper for the pleasure of being swindled by their father. These gamins of the bazaar are an amusing race. Stunted, bright-eyed, and unboundedly quick and bitter of tongue, they have neither fear nor respect for their seniors. The lips that a moment ago were fervently kissing your hand for the copper you gave at their asking, are at the next moment going at the rate of sixty miles an hour in chaff and abuse of some greybeard in collision with whom their owner has come. Sometimes even I have seen the gamin go the length of brickbats, but even this elicits but little remark and no punishment. Some of the Armenian youngsters were carrying on trade on their own account, one child of twelve having a shop of his own, and appearing no mean rival of the older men around him. But these Armenians begin life early and develop rapidly, passing from babyhood to manhood at a bound. Their women marry at twelve I am told, and I have frequently seen Armenian girls who looked old enough for anything at that age.

In one store kept by a Persian, I was immensely amused by the owner’s admiration for the beard of a German friend who was with me. It was too droll to see the solemn red-bearded merchant in his high conical hat of black felt tenderly stroking the astonished German’s beard between the palms of his hands. However, I believe my friend’s beard produced such an impression, that the carpets shown us were of the best, and the prices asked not too exorbitant.

Throughout the bazaar the streets are so extremely narrow that you could in many places spring from one house to another across the street. Everywhere the mud is more than ankle deep. At the street corners you are run over by rough carts dragged creaking drearily along by grim-looking buffaloes, and if you avoid this fate, a stalwart waterman—with bare brown legs and a round skullcap of white felt, with only one garment on, and that all open at the chest, displaying a skin of red copper colour, with a huge jar of terra-cotta on his shoulder filled with the precious fluid which he so seldom uses—will jostle and knock you down. Nor must you lose your temper; for to strike or roughly handle one of these gentry in their own domains would be to call down the wrath of the whole bazaar on your devoted head. Here they have no notion of fair play, and in a moment you would be hustled, beaten, stoned, and all as pitilessly as a welsher on an English racecourse; and if, half dead, you escaped without a knife between your ribs, you might indeed think yourself lucky.

The most interesting shops to me were the furriers, in which I saw an enormous number of lynxes’ skins, brought, so they said, from the Black Sea coast; and the armourers’ shops, in which with the roughest tools they executed most elaborate and beautiful handles in silver and black for blades of every quality and date.

Having purchased my costume and seen as much of the bazaar as I cared to, I returned to Tiflis proper, and here the streets were fast filling with the gymnasts returning from school. The difference between a Russian gymnast and an English schoolboy is as great as that between the climates in which they live. Everywhere the Russian gymnast has the same costume—a blue frock-coat with brass buttons and a quasi military-peaked cap. His whole bearing, however small he may be, is that of a little old man, half soldier, half scholar, and in all sedate and quite a man of the world. He has, as far as I have seen, no games; bear-fighting is unknown to him; that sterner kind of fighting, which in English schooldays generally takes place behind the chapel, is equally so; he wears gloves if he can afford it, he speaks French, and makes a poor imitation of French manners; he is nearly as much addicted to spectacles as a German student, is not the least bit shy in ladies’ society, and smokes with an easy grace that many a freshman might envy. Poor fellow, his precocious social qualities are dearly bought at the sacrifice of all the merry, untamed roughness of the English schoolboy.

Everywhere the streets teem with uniforms, from that of the gymnast of eight years old to that of the general of eighty. But be not alarmed, pacific sojourner in the streets of Tiflis! Many, nay most of these warlike-looking men are at least as peaceable civilians as yourself. That gorgeous apparel which you believe must cover the manly form of a dashing cavalry officer, is but the official dress of a telegraphist or an apothecary’s clerk. All those medals and orders adorn the breast, not of a veteran general, but of a well-fed, contented tailor. Why he got them he perhaps can explain to you. I have seen the phenomenon of a peaceable civilian’s breast blazing with brass plates and orders at a Governor’s reception, but I never could understand the cause of that phenomenon.

To atone for the warlike aspect of many of its well-fed citizens, Tiflis presents to you, in common with other towns in the Caucasus and Southern Russia, some strangely domestic specimens of the officer proper. Any day of the week you may meet on the boulevard, with sword clanking by his side and perhaps some fair dame with him, a young dragoon in full uniform, with a poultice tied round his neck, or a large white cloth bandaging his manly cheeks to cure the faceache. Such a facecloth we are accustomed to see round the scullery-maid’s red face in England, but in full uniform it seems a strange appendage to heroic youth.

The Russians are a hopeless puzzle to a foreigner. They stringently prohibit the importation of the most harmless foreign newspaper, erasing whole passages in any sent to residents amongst them by post; and yet Mr. Grenville Murray’s book, ‘Russians of To-day,’ is allowed to be sold, and has had such a rapid sale that I could only secure a second-hand Tauchnitz edition for love or money; and yet no one could lash Russian vices and foibles with a truer or more unsparing hand than the author of that extremely clever book. There is a contradiction of one kind or another in every phase of Russian life. The shopkeeper, who speaks half-a-dozen languages well, cannot tell what change to give you without the help of his abacus. Bred in a wild, rough country, with splendid opportunities for field-sports, and really with plenty of pluck and muscle to excel in them, the Russian gentleman cares little or nothing for them. In the south, which alone I know, few except the military men ride much, and when they do it is not for pleasure; still fewer skate well, and the best of those who skate at all are half Germans from Riga; there are no games to correspond to our cricket, football, or tennis. Of indoor amusements dancing and cards are the Alpha and Omega. Billiards, as played in Russia, resemble skittles as much as billiards. In spite of the gorgeous apparel of their priests, and the splendour of their ceremonials, few educated Russians believe in anything; though the peasant is as truly religious as any peasant in the world. The literature most read in Russia by ladies and idle men is that of P. de Kock, and French novelists like him.

The members of the upper middle class, if that means men of a certain position and wealth, can scarcely live without perfume and cosmetics; yet in travelling, if not at home, they wash their faces much as an elephant washes his, by drawing water into their mouth and then squirting it out into their hands, whence they transfer it to their faces. Many of them despise pocket-handkerchiefs, except as a means of conveying perfume about with them. All of them will meet a male acquaintance with the bow of a courtier of Louis XV., and spit on the carpet of a lady’s boudoir.

But meanwhile I have arrived at the office for the sale of ‘podorojnas’, or travelling tickets; and as I am in need of one for the journey to Lenkoran, to be commenced on the morrow, I enter. At the desk are two clerks in uniform, with a counting-board before them. I state what I want; and after ten minutes spent in referring to a book of fares, and wrangling and reckoning over the abacus, they tell me the charge is nine roubles, but suggest that perhaps I would like a return pass. ‘Well, if I did, what would that come to?’ More reasoning, and a hotter dispute than ever. At last the answer is arrived at, nineteen roubles ten copecks. Now, according to all preconceived ideas, it seems absurd that a return fare should cost more than twice the single fare, so I declined, and asked for a single. Here a consultation ensues, which results in my being told with many smiling apologies that they had made a slight mistake: the single pass would cost ten roubles. ‘All right,’ is my answer, ‘only give it me.’ Here some one else’s business intervenes, and the second clerk turns to have a chat and a cigarette with a friend who has wandered in, probably from some other office, in an absent way. Whilst these two shock-headed counter-jumpers are exchanging elaborate bows and grandiloquent speeches, I have to wait in sad disgust. At last, when the farewell bow has been performed, and the gentleman with the dirty white shirt-front and prison crop has had the honour of saluting his friend and wishing him good-day, clerk number one induces clerk number two to return to my ‘podorojna.’ Then they make a fourth calculation, going over all the old ground again, and discover with a fine smile and bow that they have made another slight mistake—the real sum should have been ten roubles fourteen copecks. To prevent further calculations I hand in a hundred-rouble note, and here follows another problem. How much change ought they to give me? Anxious to get away I solve the problem for them, and am met merely by an incredulous stare, while the beads on the abacus are rattled up and down harder than ever. At length they make it out eighty-nine roubles eighty-six copecks, and with a sigh of relief hand me ninety roubles, adding, as they turn to the small cash drawer, ‘Now we owe you eighty-six copecks.’ I am weak enough to set them right, and hand them one of the five-rouble notes back. In return for this they hand me a three-rouble note and two singles, leaving the error as bad as ever. Again I feel impelled by conscience to interfere in their interests; and apparently much against the grain get them at last to pay me only what they owe, or rather two copecks less, for try as I would nothing could induce them to be absolutely accurate.

Glad to get my pass at last, I leave the office, meekly wondering what a pass to Lenkoran really costs, and whether it would not be cheaper in the end for Russia to have better-educated employÉs in Government offices, even if she had to pay them a trifle more. I took the trouble to jot down this incident exactly as it happened at the time, because I thought I might be accused of overcolouring my picture of Russian official imbecility.

Hugging my pass to me as the emblem of freedom from an enforced stay in a city I was already beginning to detest, I drove round to my different friends to say adieu, and to make my last preparations for a start, noticing as I drove the extraordinarily high-sounding names with which the Russians of Tiflis dignify their drinking dens. Two of the lowest order, standing side by side, were ‘The Rose of Paradise’ and ‘The New World.’ In bidding adieu to one of my friends the conversation turned on Professor Bryce’s book, he having met the author when in Tiflis. He assured me that, in spite of all he could say, no one would credit that the Professor had really achieved the ascent of Ararat, so deep-rooted is the belief in the Caucasus that Ararat cannot be climbed, and so utterly unable are these people to judge of the value of an Englishman’s word. I was struck by the remark, because Professor Bryce says in his book that none of the natives believe that Parrot or Abich ever ascended Ararat, and it seemed singular that he, too, should share their fate.

During the last day or two I had secured the services of a Pole, an ex-keeper of the Grand Duke’s, who was also a kind of assistant bird-stuffer at the Tiflis Museum. Late on the evening of my last day he turned up, with a little bundle of necessaries in a pocket-handkerchief, and, having handed over to him a five-barrelled revolving rifle on the principle of Colt’s revolvers, which I had bought for a mere song, he and I lay down to rest on beds for the last time for many weeks. That rifle, by the way, turned out an excellently accurate fire-arm, the only weapon made on the revolving principle that I ever met with of which so much could be said.