ABSTRACT
ONE morning in April, 1887, after a five days' passage from Odessa, we entered the harbour at Batum.
Batum (Hatel Imperial, Hatel de France, Hatel d'Europe) is a town of 10,000 inhabitants, mostly Georgians j it consists of an ancient Asiatio quarter, dirty and tumble-down looking, and a European one only seven years old. Its situation at the foot of the mountains is lovely beyond all description. The place has a deoidedly "Far West" look about it, everything seelDs halffinished; the streets are broad and, with a few exoeptions, unpaved, the depth of the mud varies from three or four inches to half a yard, heaps of rotting filth furnish food for numerous pigs, and in the best thoroughfares duoks find con· venient lakes on which to disport themselves.
