I shall therefore take my reader to some convenient standpoint in the environs, let us say to the cliffs on the right bank of the Rion and the hill upon which the massive ruins of the cathedral rise on the sky-line above the leafy brakes (Fig. 6, a). I can show you the position from the opposite bank of the river in a picture which was taken over a mile above the town from the road which ascends the valley and which we followed on our way to Gelat (Fig. 6). The Rion is flowing from you into the middle distance coming from the north; Kutais itself is hidden by a wooded promontory (Fig. 6, d); but you see the group of buildings which compose the Armenian and the Catholic churches, and which crown the extreme northerly projection of the site (Fig. 6, b). Three bridges span the Rion where it sweeps past the town confined between lofty banks, and lead from the busy streets to the peaceful heights which overlook them and command all the landscape of the plain. I cannot imagine a more charming walk than by the hill church of St. George (Fig. 6, c) to the pleasant eminence which I have already described. We reach our point, and there before us expands the open landscape of which the second photograph embraces a considerable part (Fig. 7). We are standing on the southern slopes of Caucasus, with a wide belt of hill and ridge behind us, and, beyond and far above such familiar natural features, the white serrations and air-borne snowfields of the inmost chain. The atmosphere is fresh and crisp even at this season and with this temperature; [9] and banks of white cloud float in the sky. At our feet lies Kutais, with head upon the hillside and foot upon the margin of the plain; the eye follows the winding river which has just escaped from Caucasus and is flowing outwards towards the opposite range; the horizon is closed by that wall of mountain, emerging solid from a tender veil of mist. The plain itself is flat as water; it is coloured with the golden hues of the ripening maize-fields and featured by a labyrinth of vague detail. On the left hand, outside the photograph, a little north of east, you just discern high on the slopes beyond the left bank of the Rion the site of the monastery of Gelat; and the other day we thought we could descry from its lofty terrace, at the base of a distant promontory of Caucasus the shimmer of the sea in the west.