We left Tiflis on Friday, 17th December, and had rather a panic at the station, as our passports had been left at the hotel, and our tickets had gone off to Baku.  However, the unpunctuality of the train helped us, and we got off all right, an hour late.  The train was about a thousand years old, and went at the rate of ten miles an hour, and we could only get second-class ordinary carriages to sleep in!  But morning showed us such lovely scenery that nothing else mattered.  One found oneself in a semi-tropical country, with soft skies and blue sea, and palms and flowers, and with tea-gardens on all the hillsides.  When will people discover Caucasia?  It is one of the countries of the world.

We had letters to Count Groholski, a most charming young fellow, who arranged a delightful journey for us into the mountains, and as we had brought no riding things we began to search the small shops for riding-boots and the like.  Then, in the evening we dined with Count Oulieheff, and had an interesting pleasant time.  Two Japanese were at dinner, and, although they couldn’t speak any tongue but their own, Japanese always manage to look interesting.  No doubt much of that depends upon being able to say nothing.

[Page Heading:  GEORGIA]

Early next day we motored out to the Count’s Red Cross camp at ——.  Here everyone was sleeping under tents or in little wooden huts, and we met some good-mannered, nice soldier men, most of them Poles.  The scenery was grand, and we were actually in the little known and wonderful old kingdom of Georgia.  Very little of it is left.{9} There are ruins all along the river of castles and fortresses and old stone bridges now crumbling into decay, but of the country, once so proud, only one small dirty city remains, and that is Artvin, on the mountain-side.  It was too full of an infectious sort of typhus for us to go there, but we drove out to the hospital on the opposite side of the valley, and the doctor in charge there gave us beds for the night.

On Sunday, December 19th, I wandered about the hillside, found some well-made trenches, and saw some houses which had been shelled.  The Turks were in possession of Artvin only a year ago, and there was a lot of fighting in the mountains.  It seems to me that the population of the place is pretty Turkish still; and there are Turkish houses with small Moorish doorways, and little windows looking out on the glorious view.  In all the mountains round here the shooting is fine, and consists of toor (goats), leopards, bears, wolves, and on the Persian front, tigers also.  Land can be had for nothing if one is a Russian.

On Sunday afternoon we drove in a most painful little carriage to a village which seemed to be inhabited by good-looking cut-throats, but there was not much to see except the picturesque, smelly, old brown houses.  We met a handsome Cossack carrying a man down to the military hospital.  He was holding him upright, as children carry each other; the man was moaning with fever, and had been stricken with the virulent typhus, which nearly always kills.  But what did the handsome Cossack care about infection?  He was a mountaineer, and had eyes with a little flame in them, and a fierce moustache.  Perhaps to-morrow he will be gone.  People die like flies in these unhealthy towns, and the Russians are supremely careless.