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 [a]left.] 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.
We went back to the hospital for dinner, and then went out into crisp, beautiful moonlight, and motored back to the Red Cross camp. I had a little hut to sleep in, which had just been built. It contained a bed and two chairs, upon one of which was a tin basin! The cold in the morning was about as sharp as anything I have known, but everyone was jolly and pleasant, and we had a charming time.
The Count told us of the old proud Georgians when there was a famine in the country and a Russian Governor came to offer relief to the starving inhabitants. Their great men went out to receive him, and said courteously, "We have not been here, Gracious One, one hundred or two hundred years, but much more than a thousand years, and during that time we have not had a visit from the Russian Government. We are pleased to see you, and the honour you have done us is sufficient in itself—for the rest we think we will not require anything at your hands."
On Monday I motored with the others out to the ferry; then I had to leave them, as they were going to ride forty miles, and that was thought too much for me. Age has no compensations, and it is not much use fighting it. One only ends by being "a wonderful old woman of eighty": reminiscent, perhaps a little obstinate, and in the world to come—always eighty?
Came back to Batoum with Count Stanislas Constant, and went for a drive with him to see the tea-gardens.
TIFLIS