say nothing.

[Page Heading: GEORGIA]

Early next day we motored out to the Count's Red Cross camp at ----.
Here everyone was sleeping under tents or in little wooden huts, and we
met some good-mannered, nice soldier men, most of them Poles. The
scenery was grand, and we were actually in the little known and
wonderful old kingdom of Georgia. Very little of it is left.{9} There
are ruins all along the river of castles and fortresses and old
stone bridges now crumbling into decay, but of the country, once so
proud, only one small dirty city remains, and that is Artvin, on the
mountain-side. It was too full of an infectious sort of typhus for us to
go there, but we drove out to the hospital on the opposite side of the
valley, and the doctor in charge there gave us beds for the night.

On Sunday, December 19th, I wandered about the hillside, found some
well-made trenches, and saw some houses which had been shelled. The
Turks were in possession of Artvin only a year ago, and there was a lot
of fighting in the mountains. It seems to me that the population of the
place is pretty Turkish still; and there are Turkish houses with small
Moorish doorways, and little windows looking out on the glorious view.
In all the mountains round here the shooting is fine, and consists of
toor (goats), leopards, bears, wolves, and on the Persian front, tigers
also. Land can be had for nothing if one is a Russian.

On Sunday afternoon we drove in a most painful little carriage to a
village which seemed to be inhabited by good-looking cut-throats, but
there was not much to see except the picturesque, smelly, old brown
houses. We met a handsome Cossack carrying a man down to the military
hospital. He was holding him upright, as children carry each other; the
man was moaning with fever, and had been stricken with the virulent
typhus, which nearly always kills. But what did the handsome Cossack
care about infection? He was a mountaineer, and had eyes with a little
flame in them, and a fierce moustache. Perhaps to-morrow he will be
gone. People die like flies in these unhealthy towns, and the Russians
are supremely careless.

We went back to the hospital for dinner, and then went out into crisp,
beautiful moonlight, and motored back to the Red Cross camp. I had a
little hut to sleep in, which had just been built. It contained a bed
and two chairs, upon one of which was a tin basin! The cold in the
morning was about as sharp as anything I have k