You cross that fabled river--the modern Rion--by the commonplace method of a railway bridge; it flows between high banks through the wide expanse of these surroundings on the southern margin of the plain. Some distance east of these lower reaches the impetuous current that has pierced the Caucasus, from which it issues at Kutais, has been deflected by the mountains of the southern border, which turn it towards the west. You do not follow its tortuous course, which skirts the outworks of these mountains as they stretch inwards from the coast; the ground is flat, the railroad points more directly for the capital at the foot of the great chain on the north. Mile upon mile the plain of the Rion was unfolded about us, a fertile province which might be made the granary of Georgia, but which would now appear to produce little else but the lowest of the cereals, an endless succession of plantations of Indian corn. The land is ill-reclaimed; little labour has been expended, and the bush starts up among the canes. At the stations we remarked groups of women and young girls clad in loose cotton dresses with cotton kerchiefs on their heads. Geese strutted along the line or paddled in the shallow streams, and we became familiar with the strange appearance of the Imeritian pigs. But still no village! At rare intervals a wooden hut with a large verandah, and here and there among the maize one of the rude wooden stages erected to command a prospect over the fields. As we advanced, the dim and misty boundary of the Caucasus took shape and colour about the lower slopes. The soft hues of vegetation, the brighter flashes of naked strata were distinguished from the uncertain background of rock and cloud; bold ridges with fantastic outlines stood up on the horizon; but here and there the white vapour was still clinging to their highest parapets and spreading fanwise to the brief circle of clear sky. Above them lay a world of half-lights and banked cloud-masses, the veiled presence of the main chain. Behind us rose the wooded ridges of the southern range, till they vanished in the folds of the murky canopy which they hold so firmly and love so well; but the marshes had disappeared and the lowest spurs which met the plain were almost devoid of trees. On our point of course the two great ranges appeared to mingle together and arrest our even progress towards the east.