Turning to the right, we traverse Peski, a quarter very different from Salalaki. Here we see small open-fronted Oriental shops in which dark Persians ply their trades, making arms, saddlery, jewellery, selling carpets, and doing a hundred other things all before the eyes of men and in the open air. There is a strange confusion of tongues and dresses; a smart little grammar-school girl rubs shoulders with a veiled Mussulman woman, and occasionally you see the uniform of a Russian officer elbowing his way through a crowd of Lesghians, Armenians, Georgians, Persians; through the midst of all this confusion runs the tram-car. We are not beyond all the influences of civilization, for, besides the tram-way, we see on a sign-board the legend "Deiches Bir" (? Deutsches Bier), over the picture of a flowing tankard. We cross the narrow bridge and pay a visit to the baths. Perhaps the reader knows something of the so-called Turkish bath, and imagines that the baths of Tiflis are of the same sort? There is certainly some similarity between the two, but there are profound differences; the treatment to which the visitor is subjected at a Turkish bath in Constantinople is not to be compared with what the Persian shampooer puts you through in Tiflis. He goes through a whole course of gymnastics with you, during which he jumps on your chest, on the small of your back, doubles you up as if you were a fowl ready for cooking, and, besides removing every particle of your epidermis, performs sundry other experiments at which the novice stares aghast. At the end of it all you make up your mind that it is not so terrible as it looks, and as you feel wonderfully refreshed you resolve to return again before long. The water is of a heat of about 100° Fahr., and is impregnated with sulphur and other substances which give it a healing virtue; it is to these springs that Tiflis owes its existence, and they have always been of much importance in the daily life of the people. Formerly it used to be the fashion for ladies of rank to hire baths and dressing-rooms for a whole day, spending the time in perfuming themselves, staining their finger tips, dressing the hair, and performing a dozen other ceremonies of the toilette, concluding with dinner, but the growth of European habits has rendered this custom less common.