seem to have been grossly overrated; their round flat caps and Roman noses had the aggravating effect on me that Dickens ascribes to Pip in "Great Expectations."

We had left in the morning Batoum deluged with rain; we arrived at Tiflis just before midnight, and found the place parched with heat and overwhelmed with dust. The phaeton that conveyed us and our luggage to the London Hotel (Gostinnitza London) stirred up dense clouds as it rattled over the ill-paved streets. Like all Russian stations, that of Tiflis is situated right outside the town, and we had a couple of miles to drive before we reached our destination, and made ourselves comfortable for the night.

CHAPTER IX.

TIFLIS AS A POLITICAL AND MILITARY CENTRE.

Tiflis in the Autumn-Development of the City-One's Impressions of the Place depend upon whether one is proceeding East or West— The Administrative District of the Caucasus-What it Cost to Conquer it-Political and Strategical Position of Tiflis-Table of Annexations during the various Russian Sovereigns' Reigns—The Conquest of Central Asia-Tiflis compared with Indian CentresThe next War in the East-Value of Russian Assurances-The Approximation of Russia and India inevitable-Lesson taught by the Annexation of Merv-The Principal Fact to be Remembered in regard to Tiflis - The Armenians: their Present and Future -Not so tame in Spirit as commonly imagined-Russian Interest in the Armenian Question--The Caucasus Deficit.

As nobody goes to the Caucasus without paying a visit to Tiflis, that city has been so often and so well described that there is no need of my devoting much attention to it. Situated 1,350 feet above the level of the sea, and exposed to the dry winds from the east, it is naturally inclined to aridity; a defect which has been increased by denuding all the mountains round about of trees. The morning after our arrival the wind tore with such force down the valley, and carried with it such clouds of grit, that we were cruelly reminded of a dusty March wind at home. Hot and dry in summer, Tiflis, however, is a delightful place in winter, and its mild and bracing atmosphere then is calculated to have an invigorating effect on the officials charged with the government of the Caucasus.

We found plenty of progress observable. The builder is busy in every part of the city, and not only are old houses being replaced by new ones, forming handsome thoroughfares, but suburbs are being developed on a very extensive scale. Situated on an unnavigable mountain torrent, which cuts too deeply into the rock to allow of the water being any ornament to the city, Tiflis straggles over a considerable space of ground, and is never at any point very far away from the country. All around it the mountain sides are bare and brown; nothing grows on them but a little camel thorn and here and there a juniper bush. Even in the town itself cultivation is only maintained by an elaborate system of artificial irrigation; not a tree or a shrub can be kept alive in the arid soil of the place without being daily attended to with the watering-can or water-cart. Thanks to this, Tiflis has a somewhat desolate look, which would be appalling but for the boulevards of stately poplars and the green gardens in the German quarter. The care which these Teuton settlers display in keeping fresh the verdant aspect of their colony contrasts remarkably with the apathy of the Russians, who do little or nothing to extend cultivation in the Georgian capital. Except where the Germans abound, the city is dry and dusty, and a most undesirable place of residence in the summer months. During this period hot arid winds often blow across the hill-sides upon Tiflis with a desiccating force, which I can only compare to a concentrated easterly wind. These produce an unceasing longing for drink and a cooling bath-the latter a luxury almost unattainable, owing to the Kura river being little more than an open sewer. When there is no wind at all the atmosphere is cool and agreeable. Happening to point out to a Russian officer the generally arid aspect of Tiflis, he said that one's impression of the Georgian capital depends largely on the direction from which the traveller arrives. Coming from the Black Sea

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coast, where constant rains drench the Anatolian and Caucasian ranges, and encourage the growth of magnificent forests and rank vegetation of a semi-tropical character, Tiflis strikes the traveller as having a scorched and withered aspect.

But if he arrives from the south or the east, from Erivan or Baku, where the country is almost entirely devoid of verdure, and nothing grows without irrigation except the camel thorn, the impression is altogether different. So far from seeing no vegetation, his eye seeks out and is refreshed by the trees and shrubs scattered here and there-the German colony seems to him quite a little paradise. This will account for most travellers arriving at Tiflis from the Caspian or Persia describing the place as "enchanting." Those who touch it in journeying the other way, from west to east, mostly, so far as my memory goes, either discover no attractions in Tiflis, or else ignore them.

The administrative district of the Caucasus consists of the region north and south of the Caucasus range, from nearly the mouth of the Don to Batoum, and from the mouth of the Kuma to the Persian border, and possesses an area (186,000 square miles) half as large again as the British Isles. This is exclusive of the territory newly annexed beyond the Caspian, the boundaries of which on the Khivan and Turcoman side are not exactly determined, but which comprise, if we add Mangishlak and other districts governed from Tiflis, an area of about the same dimensions. Thus the Governor-General at Tiflis rules an area larger than Germany and the British Isles put together, with England a second time thrown in; and a population, inclusive of the Turcomans, of 64 millions, or not quite twice the population of London. To conquer this area took Russia more than 150 years; it cost her from beginning to end the lives of more troops than we spent in acquiring the whole of our Empire;

and to maintain order she keeps within its boundaries to-day a force considerably larger than the English army in India, involving, with other expenses, an annual deficit of not less than a million sterling.

Several circumstances contribute to render Tiflis the proper capital of this appanage of the Russian Crown. It has the largest population by a long way of any of the towns lying south of Rostoff, at the mouth of the Don, and Astrakhan, at the mouth of the Volga. If we leave out Bagdad, which lies too far south to be included in these comparisons, it is larger, in point of inhabitants, than any town in Asiatic Turkey; Erzeroum, the only extensive place lying between it and Constantinople, having less than half the population. Added to this, it occupies a good central position, politically and commercially, being situated at the cross road of the trade flowing from the Caspian to the Black Sea, east and west, and from Asia to Europe in a northerly direction via the sole split in the Caucasus ridge from sea to seathe Dariel Pass. It was this strategical quality that so greatly facilitated the conquest of the country, once Russia had occupied Tiflis. In 1800 she took possession of the town "in the interests of humanity and order." Once settled in Georgia she pushed out down the valley of the Kura to the Caspian, and conquered all she now holds from Persia. Afterwards she turned her arms the other way, down the valley of the Rion to the Black Sea, and annexed all her present dominions there from Turkey. Transcaucasia conquered from sea to sea, she set to work at the rear to subjugate the Caucasus itself-a tough bit of business, seeing that from the Black Sea to the Caspian the mountains were 700 miles long by 100 broad, and covering an area nearly half as large again as England. For thirty years a quarter of a million troops were employed on this undertaking, and in the end Russia only attained her aim by annihilating or expelling the