the distance our
baggage-waggons slowly approaching. In re-entering the village we
overtook a farmer with an English reaping-machine; this man was less
taciturn than his neighbours, and of his own accord entered into
conversation with us; he was loud in his praises of the reaper, and
said that the man who invented a certain part of it (a patent screw,
I think) ought to be "kissed behind the ear." We tried to interest
him in a pet idea of our own, viz., that village communities should
buy machinery collectively, but we regret to say that we could not
make a convert of him.

It was nine o'clock before our young friend, Prince Giorgi, arrived
with the goods under his charge; and while we were at supper much
merriment was caused by his vain endeavours to check himself in
the use ofam sure
that if English firms would send out buyers they would not regret it,
unless they dealt with the wily Armenian middle-man instead of the
Georgian producer. The fear of the Lesghian robber-bands prevents any
great outlay of capital in the development of such a district, and,
indeed, nobody in Georgia has much capital to spare, so the greater
part of the estate I am speaking of, hundreds of square miles in
extent, is a pathless forest.

By eight o'clock we were in the saddle. The path rises through thick
woodlands to the summit of a hill crossed by a narrow, rocky pass
which has an unpleasant reputation as being the haunt of brigands;
only a few weeks before, a party of travellers had been attacked there,
two of their number were wounded, and they were all relieved of