whistle; yet a third warning, in the shape of a smart toot from the engine itself, and the train pulls out.  Full half the crowd about the stations appear to be in military uniform; the remainder are a heterogeneous company, embracing the modern Russian dandy, who affects the latest Parisian fashions, the Circassians and Georgians in picturesque attire, and the ever-present ragamuffin moujik.  At one station we pass an institution peculiarly Russian—­a railway prison-car conveying convicts eastward.  It resembles an ordinary box-car, with iron grating toward the top.  We can see the poor wretches peeping through the bars, and the handcuffs on their wrists.  Outside at either end is a narrow platform, where stands, with loaded guns and fixed bayonets, a guard of four soldiers.

Once or twice before dark the train stops to replenish the engine’s supply of fuel.  Elevated iron tanks containing a supply of the liquid fuel take the place of the coal-sheds familiar to ourselves.  The petroleum is supplied to the smaller tank on the engine through a pipe, as is water to the reservoir.

Such villages as we pass are the most unlovely clusters of mud hovels imaginable.  Only the people are interesting, and the life of the railway itself.  The Circassian peasantry are picturesque in bright colors, and the thin veneering of Western civilization spread over the semi-barbarity of the Russian officials and first-class passengers is an interesting study in itself.

We have been promising ourselves a day in Tiflis, the old Georgian capital, and now the head-quarters of the Russian army of the Caucasus, which our friends of the French scientific party said we would find interesting.

We find it both pleasant and interesting, for here are all modern improvements of hotel and street, as well as English telegraph officers, one a former acquaintance at Teheran.  Tiflis now claims about one hundred and sixty thousand inhabitants, and is situated quite picturesquely in the narrow valley of the Kur.  The old Georgian quarters still retain their Oriental appearance—­gabled houses, narrow, crooked streets, and filth.  The modernized, or European, portion of the city contains broad streets, rows of shops in which is displayed everything that could be found in any city in Europe, and street-railways.

These latter were introduced in 1882, and at first met with fierce antagonism from the drosky-drivers, who swarm here as in every city in Russia.  These wild Jehus of the Caucasus expected the tram-cars to turn out the same as any other vehicle.  Four people were killed by collisions the first day.  Severe punishment had to be resorted to in order to stop the hostility of the drosky-drivers against the strange innovation.

The day is spent in seeing the city and visiting the hot sulphur baths and in the evening we attend a big bal masque in a suburban garden.  A regimental band of fifty pieces plays “Around the World,” by order of Prince Nicholas F, who exerts himself to make things pleasant for us in the garden.  The famed beauties of Georgia, Circassia, and Mingrelia, masked and costumed, promenade and waltz with Russian officers, and sometimes join Circassian officers in a charming native dance.