set the example of religious persecution. The Muslims say that the Christianity of the Georgians is owing to their fondness for wine and for pork, both which good things, as everybody knows, the Prophet has forbidden to true believers. They belong, of course, to the Orthodox Eastern Church, and are now in full communion with the Church of Russia, of which indeed. they may be said to have become a branch, though their liturgy differs a little in some points. During the earlier middle ages I suspect that they were more influenced by heterodox Armenia than by Constantinople, though they separated from the Armenian Church in the end of the sixth century, when the latter finally anathematized the Council of Chalcedon. Their ecclesiastical alphabet, for they have two, is taken from the Armenian. Of their number it is difficult to form an estimate; it can hardly exceed 500,000 souls, and may be considerably less.1

Scattered through Upper Georgia, and to be found among the peasantry as well as in the towns, there is a considerable Armenian population, who probably settled here when their national kingdom was destroyed by the Seljukian conquerors, Alp Arslan and Malek Shah, in the eleventh century. Farther south, in Armenia proper, they constitute the bulk of the population in the country districts, Kurds being mixed with them in the mountains, Tatars in the plains, and Persians in the towns. As I shall have something to say of them in a later chapter, it is unnecessary to

The total number of the Grusinian race, including Imeritians and Mingrelians, is estimated by a recent Russian statistician of authority at 850,000.

describe them at present, further than to remark that they are the most vigorous and intelligent of the Transcaucasian races, with a gift for trade which has enabled them to get most of the larger business of the country into their hands. Their total number in

these countries is estimated at 550,000.

Going down the Kur from Tiflis towards the Caspian, one finds the Georgians give place to a people whom the Russians call Tatars, and who are unquestionably a branch of the great Turkic family. When or how they settled here, no one can precisely tell, but it seems likely the earliest immigration was from the north, along the Caspian coast. There is no doubt that the Emperor Heraclius, in his long war with Persia in the middle of the seventh century, called in to his aid the Khazars, a Scythian tribe, from the Caspian steppe north of Derbend. Probably these Khazars were the first Turks who settled on this side the mountains; but many others must have come in afterwards from the south-east at the time of the great Seljukian conquests in the eleventh century. Veritable Turks these fellows certainly are, quite unlike the mongrel race who go by the name of the Turks in Europe, and much more resembling, in face, figure, and character, the pure undiluted Turkman of Khiva and the steppes of the Jaxartes. Being in some districts a settled and industrious race, they are, however, less wild-looking than the Turkmans, and remind one more of the grave and respectable Tatar of Kazan or the Crimea. Their villages, often mere burrows in the dry soil, are scattered all over the steppe eastward

to the Caspian, and southward as far as the Persian frontier. Many are agricultural, many more live by their sheep and cattle, which in summer are driven up towards the Armenian mountains and in winter return to the steppe; and some of them, settled in the larger towns, practise various handicrafts, and among others weave those rich carpets and other woollen fabrics which pass in the markets of Europe under the name of Persian, but really come from the south-west shores. of the Caspian.

The Tatars are also the general carriers of the country. On the few roads, or oftener upon the open steppe, one sees their endless trains of carts, and more rarely their strings of camels, fetching goods from Shemakha, or Baku, or Tavriz, to Tiflis, thence to be despatched over the Dariel into Southern Russia, or by railway to Poti and Western Europe. The last of their occupations, the one in which they most excel, and which they have almost to themselves, is brigandage. To what extent it prevails, I cannot attempt to say, for, as every traveller knows, there is no subject, not even court scandal, on which one hears such an immense number of stories, some of them obviously exaggerated, many of them honestly related, most of them absolutely impossible to test. If we had believed a quarter part of what the quidnuncs of Tiflis told us, we should have thought the country seriously disturbed, and travelling, especially by night, full of peril. If we had gone by our own experience, we should have pronounced the steppes of the Kur a great deal safer than Blackheath Common. Stories

were always being brought into the city, and even appearing in the papers, of robberies, sometimes of murders, committed on the roads to Elizavetpol and Erivan; and along the latter road, we found the folk at the post stations with imaginations ready to see a Tatar behind every bush. Even the Russian officials

at Tiflis, who of course desired to make little of anything that reflects on the vigilance of the government, advised us to be careful where we halted, and how we displayed any valuables. I cannot help believing, therefore, that robberies do sometimes occur, and no doubt it is the Tatars, or at least bands led by a Tatar chief, who perpetrate them. But the substantial danger is not really more than sufficient to give a little piquancy to travelling, and make you fondle your pistols with the air of a man who feels himself prepared for an emergency. In a dull country, far removed from the interests and movements of the Western world, the pleasure of life is sensibly increased when people have got the exploits of robbers to talk about. It is a subject level with the meanest imagination; the idle Georgian noble and the ignorant peasant enjoy it as heartily as Walter Scott himself.

Some of the tales related about these robbers remind one of the legends of Robin Hood and other high-minded outlaws, who relieved the rich in order to relieve the poor. It is told, for instance, of Dali Agha, who seems to be at this moment the most famous of these brigand chiefs, that, being in love with the daughter of a man of substance, her father refused to give her to him except for a large sum of

money. Dali was poor, but brave and sanguine; he demanded two years time to collect it, and when the father promised to wait for so long, he took to the road to collect the sum by robbery; and though the faithless father had married the girl to another suitor before the appointed time, he liked the profession so well that he has not quitted it.' He is at the head of a large band, and directs them to use all possible courtesy towards their victims, who are never killed except in case of necessity. Out of his plunder he gives freely to the poor, and is so much beloved that no one will betray him; once, while Cossacks were. scouring the country after him, he was living quietly in Erivan under the governor's nose. A physician in government employment was travelling towards Elizavetpol to inspect the hospitals of his district, when he saw two suspicious persons on horseback a little way off, and drove faster on. As he turned the corner of a hill, three more appeared, and then a band, whose leader rode forward and wished him good evening. "Good evening," replied the doctor, who recognised the bandit. "I perceive you are in want of money; well, I haven't got much, only some hundred roubles; here they are in my trunk."-"I see you are a good man," says Dali; "on what business are you travelling?" The doctor explains that he is going to visit a hospital, and needs some little money to reach it, so begs Dali to let him have a couple of roubles, which will pay for the post-horses thither. "You shall

A similar tale was told of the robber Arsen many years ago; so I dare say it is a stock incident, applied to every famous robber in turn, and may (who knows?) be a form of the Sun and Dawn myth.