My
imagining, therefore, of the previous night was not altogether vain.
All that was needed was that my comical host should look in. As it
was, in his absence I drank his health with a Georgian.
IV
SOCRATES OF ZUGDIDA
I was travelling without a map, never knowing what I was coming to
next, what long Caucasian settlement or rushing unbridged river, and I
came quite unexpectedly to a town. I had not the remotest idea that a
town was near, and when I learned the name of the town I realised that
I had never heard of it before--Zugdida.
This is no fairy story. Zugdida veritably exists, and may be found
marked on large maps. I came into it on a Sunday evening, and found it
one of the largest and most lively of all the Caucasian towns I had
yet visited; the shops and the taverns all open, the wide streets
crowded with gaily dressed horsemen, the footways thronged with
peasants walking out in Sunday best. A remote town withal, not on the
railways, and unvisited as yet by any motor-car--unvisited, because
the rivers in these parts are all bridgeless.
I was looking for a place where I might spend the night--towns are
inhospitable places, and one is timorous of sleeping in a tavern full
of armed drunkards--when I was hailed by a queer old man, who noticed
that I was a stranger.
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