At last the landscape opened, the most extensive of these oases, the fertile valley of Khertvis. It is heralded from afar by a line of orchards and by gardens terraced up the slope. A well-planned and elaborate system of aqueducts and channels dispense water on every side. Then the road rises up a hillside and commands a startling scene. Below you, crowning a crag at the confluence of two rivers, a well-preserved example of a mediæval castle on a large scale lifts its towers against a background of lofty cliffs (Fig. 16). A village cowers at the foot of the fortress, almost hidden by dense trees. Such is the castle and township of Khertvis, situated at the junction of the river of Akhalkalaki with the Kur. The road follows the right bank of the first of these streams, and the station is some distance from the town. We were obliged to leave the carriage and entrust our effects to the villagers, who carried them down the steep sides of the high cliff. It was six o'clock; we crossed the river of Akhalkalaki by a little footbridge, and pitched our tents on the floor of a shady garden, not far from the margin of the Kur. A motley group of people collected about us; of what race, of what faith? Mussulmans! We expected and received the answer, although there was little except our knowledge of the checkered history of these valleys to indicate their adhesion to Islam. The owner of the garden bore the name of Bin Ali Bey Vishnadzi, and was of mixed Georgian and Turkish blood; he stands in the centre of my illustration, in Cossack dress, with his cap on one side (Fig. 17). His cast of countenance is Georgian, and the hair is somewhat fair; yet his uncle, Hasan Bey, has the Turkish type. His mixed ancestry is no exception among the villagers, and they all call themselves Turks. Their number was given to me as 1500, with 200 houses; the Russian census, which classes them as Georgians, bears out these figures as approximately correct. [31] Among them are a handful of Armenian Christians; the old man with a staff, seated in the foreground of my picture, was our guide from the road to our pleasant camping-ground, and belonged to the Armenian race. If reliance can be placed on the figure given by Dubois, the population of Khertvis has almost doubled since 1833. [32] However this may be, the township is now in full decline; misery was written in the faces of a great part of the inhabitants, of whom many were preparing to leave Russian soil. As we passed through the streets, between the tumble-down houses, we observed that some of the shops had been permanently closed. Is it their unfitness to flourish under systematic government? Or the policy of the Russian Government to discourage Mussulmans, with their Turkish sympathies, or some special causes which we were unable to ascertain? Our stay was too short to sift fact from fable; and a rigid reticence was observed by the leading people, who were evidently under the influence of fear. [33]