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. He kept one of the two hundred wine-cellars of
the town, and was able to give me a good supper and a glass of
wine with it. He was an aged Mingrelian, bald on his crown, but
lank-haired, dreamy-eyed, stooping; he had a Robinson Crusoe type of
countenance. I had come to one of the oldest inhabitants of Zugdida,
an extraordinary character.