Port Said, a refuge for the scum, male and female, of St. Petersburg, Moscow, and Odessa.  Drunkenness and debauchery reigned paramount.  Low gambling-houses, cafe chantants, and less reputable establishments flourished under the liberal patronage of the Russian officers, who, out of sheer ennui, ruined their pockets and constitutions with drunken orgies, night and day.  There was no order of any kind, no organized police-force, and robberies and assassinations took place almost nightly.  Small-pox was raging in the place when Gerome left it; also a loathsome disease called the “Bouton d’alep “—­a painful boil which, oddly enough, always makes its appearance upon the body in odd numbers, never in even.  It is caused by drinking or washing in unboiled water.  Though seldom fatal, there is no cure for the complaint but complete change of climate.

We now set about making preparations for the journey.  Provisions, saddlery, both had to be thought of; and, having laid in a small stock of Liebig, tea, biscuits, chocolate, and cigarettes (for space was limited), I proceeded, under Gerome’s guidance, to purchase a saddle.  Seventy-five roubles bought a capital one, including bridle.  Here let me advise those visiting Persia to follow my example, and buy their saddlery in Tiflis.  There is a heavy duty payable on foreign saddles in Russia, and they are not one whit better, or indeed so well suited to the purpose, as those made in the Caucasus.

One hears a deal, in Europe, of the beauty of the Circassian and Georgian women.  Although I remained in Tiflis over a week, I did not see a single pretty woman among the natives.  As in every Russian town, however, the “Moushtaid,” or “Bois de Boulogne” of Tiflis, was daily, the theatre nightly, crowded with pretty faces of the dark-eyed, oval-faced Russian type.  The new opera-house, a handsome building near the governor’s palace, is not yet completed.

The Hotel de Londres was the favourite rendezvous after the play.  Here till the small hours assembled nightly the elite of European Tiflis.  Russian and Georgian officers in gorgeous uniforms of dark green, gold lace, and astrachan; French and German merchants with their wives and daughters; with a sprinkling demi-mondaines from Odessa or Kharkoff, sipping tea or drinking kummel and “kaketi” at the little marble tables, and discussing the latest scandals.  Kaketi, a wine not unlike Carlowitz, is grown in considerable quantities in the Caucasus.  There are two kinds, red and white, but the former is considered the best.  Though sound and good, it is cheap enough—­one rouble the quart.  Tobacco is also grown in small quantities in parts of Georgia and made into cigarettes, which are sold in Tiflis at three kopeks per hundred.  But it is poor, rank stuff, and only smoked by the peasantry and droshki-drivers.

[Illustration:  TIFLIS]