The Hôtel de Londres was the favourite _rendezvous_ after the play.
Here till the small hours assembled nightly the _élite_ of European
Tiflis. Russian and Georgian officers in gorgeous uniforms of dark
green, gold lace, and astrachan; French and German merchants with
their wives and daughters; with a sprinkling _demi-mondaines_ from
Odessa or Kharkoff, sipping tea or drinking kummel and "kakèti" at the
little marble tables, and discussing the latest scandals. Kakèti, a
wine not unlike Carlowitz, is grown in considerable quantities in
the Caucasus. There are two kinds, red and white, but the former is
considered the best. Though sound and good, it is cheap enough--one
rouble the quart. Tobacco is also grown in small quantities in parts
of Georgia and made into cigarettes, which are sold in Tiflis at three
kopeks per hundred. But it is poor, rank stuff, and only smoked by the
peasantry and droshki-drivers.

[Illustration: TIFLIS]

Tiflis has a large and important garrison, but is not fortified. Its
topographical depôt is one of the best in Russia, and I managed, not
without some difficulty, to obtain from it maps of Afghanistán and
Baluchistán. The latter I subsequently found better and far more
accurate than any obtainable in England. The most insignificant
hamlets and unimportant camel-tracks and wells were set down with
extraordinary precision, especially those in the districts around
Kelát.

There is plenty of sport to be had round Tiflis. The shooting is
free excepting over certain tracts of country leased by the Tiflis
shooting-club. Partridge, snipe, and woodcock abound, and there are
plenty of deer and wild boar within easy distance of the capital. Ibex