n poles
imported from England, and then poles composed of two iron railway-rails
clamped together. For much of the way we see the splendidly equipped
Indo-European Telegraph Company's line, the finest telegraph line in the
world. Equipped with substantial iron poles throughout, and with every
insulator covered with an iron cap in countries where the half-civilized
natives are wont to do them damage, this line runs through the various
countries of Europe and Asia to Teheran, Persia, where it joins hands
with the British Government line to India.

Following along the valley of the River Kur, our train is sometimes
rattling along up a wild gorge between rugged heights whose sides are
bristling with dark coniferous growth, or more precipitous, with huge
jagged rocks and the variegated vegetation of the Caucasus strewn in wild
confusion. Again, we emerge upon a peaceful grassy valley, lovely enough
to have been the Happy Valley of Rasselas, and walled in almost
completely with forest-clad mountains. Through it, perhaps, there winds a
mountain stream, fed by welling springs and hidden rivulets, and on the
stream is sure to be a town or village. An old Georgian town it would be,
picturesque but dirty, built, too, with an eye to security from attack.
One town is particularly noteworthy--not a very large town, but more
important, doubtless, in times past than now. Out of the valley there
rises a rocky butte, abrupt almost as though it were some monstrous
vegetable growth. On the summit of this natural fortress some old
Georgian chief had, in the good old days of independence, built a massive
castle, and nestling beneath its protecting shadow around the base of the
butte is the town, a picturesque town of adobe and wattle walls and
quaint red tiles. So intensely verdant is the valley, so thickly wooded
the dark surrounding mountains, so brown the walls, so red the tiles, and
so picturesque the elevated castle, that even K goes into raptures, and
calls the picture beautiful.

The improvement in the Russian telegraph line, perhaps, owes something to
its brief association with the invading stranger from England; and now
among the sublime loveliness of this Caucasian Switzerland one finds the
station-houses built with far more pretence to the picturesque than on
the barren steppes toward Baku and the Caspian. Here is the Caucasia of
our youthful dreams, and the mystic hills and vales whence Mingrelian
princes issued forth to deeds o