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Here is the Caucasia of our youthful dreams, and the mystic hills and vales whence Mingrelian princes issued forth to deeds of valor in old romantic tales.
Farther south, and extending some way inland from the sea, is the principality of Mingrelia, where we again tread classic ground, inasmuch as our wanderings have brought us to the Æa of Circe and the Argonauts. In a Mingrelian landscape we are struck at the aspect afforded by the numerous whitewashed cottages as they dot the well-wooded hills.
The houses are neat and ornamental; the green painted church towers and barracks peep invitingly from between. The large river Ribon separates the town from the large citadel which very picturesquely occupies a neighbouring hill. The dresses of the people are as various as round Tiflis; the headgear of the Mingrelian peasants appears truly comic.
The cuisine at the lunch-counters embraces fresh trout from neighboring mountain streams, caught by vagrant Mingrelian Isaac Waltons, who bring them in on strings of plaited grass to sell. Humorous scenes sometimes enliven our stops at the stations. The Russian warnings for travellers to seek the train before it is everlastingly too late cover fully a minute of time.
I now took a certain Greek into my service, who could speak the Mingrelian language, who occasioned me a thousand troubles, which it were tedious to recount. Leaving Phasis, Contarini travels through Mingrelia and Georgia, into Media, and, passing the Caspian, arrives in Tartary.
The Sultan, so far as dress goes, might be taken for a Mingrelian gentleman, excepting, indeed, for the turban, whose ample folds in alternate colours of red, yellow, brown, and white, encircled his head.
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.
"He was the man whom the Oracle indicated as the wisest man alive. All men knew nothing, but Socrates was found wiser than they, for he alone knew that he knew nought." A look of pleased vanity floated over the face of my Mingrelian host. He was at least quite human. Before going to bed we drank one another's healths. This is not simply a matter of making pastry, as you shall see.
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