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.

I asked him how the town had grown in his memory.

"When I came here from the hills forty years ago," said he, "long
before the Russo-Turkish War, there were three houses here--three
only, two were wine-cellars. Now Zugdida is second only to Kutais. I
remember how two more wine-cellars were built, and a small general
shop, then a bread shop, then two more wine--cellars, two little
grocer's shops, some farm-houses. We became a fair-sized village, and
wondered how we had grown. The Russians came and built stone houses
and a military barracks, a prison, a police-station, and a big church;
then came the Hotel of Russia, the Universal Stores. We built the
broad, flag-stoned market, and named a Fair day; saddlery and sword
shops opened, blacksmiths, gunsmiths, coppersmiths, jewel workers,
tailors; Singer's sewing machines came, two more hotels, and we grew
and grew. We have now over two hundred taverns. We have offered the
Government to pay for all the necessary land, and defray all minor
expenses, if they will connect us with Poti by railway, and if it were
not that so many people want bribes we should be part of Europe. As it
is, we're just a bit of the old Caucasus."

He pointed to a group of drunkards, all armed from head to foot,
but now clinging to one another and raising their voices in Asiatic
chan