The only daily train leaves at eight o'clock in the morning; the station, although it is a terminus of so much importance, is a wretched wooden building, a striking contrast to the one at Baku, which would not disgrace our own metropolis. The railway skirts the sea for about thirty miles, and on the right lies a range of hills covered with a luxuriant growth of fine forest-trees and thick undergrowth gay with blossoms; in the neighbourhood of the town there are already many pretty villas. The rain of the previous few weeks had made the woods wonderfully beautiful, and the moist air was heavy with fragrance; I never saw such a wealth of plant life before. At Samtredi, where the lines from Batum and Poti meet, we leave Guri and Mingreli behind us and enter Imereti. On the left we now have a fine broad plain, and near us flows the Rion, the ancient Phasis. The country is far more thickly populated than Guri or Mingreli, or any other part of Trans-Caucasia, but it could easily support a much larger number if the ground were properly worked. I was amazed when I saw, for the first time, five pairs of oxen dragging one wooden plough, but the sight of this became familiar to me before I had lived long in Georgia. At the roadside stations (I need hardly say that our train stopped at all of them) I saw some fine faces--one poor fellow in a ragged sheepskin cloak quite startled me by his resemblance to Dante Alighieri. From the station of Rion, on the river of that name, a branch line runs northward to Kutaïs, none other than the Cyta in Colchis whence Jason carried off Medea and the Golden Fleece. Kutaïs (Hôtel de France, Hôtel Colchide, Hôtel d'Italie) is a beautiful town of 25,000 inhabitants, almost all Georgians. The ruins of an old castle on the other side of the river show where the town stood a century ago, and from this point the best view of Kutaïs is obtained. Abundance of good building-stone, a rich soil, and plenty of trees, render the capital of Imereti a charming sight; its elevation of about 500 feet makes its atmosphere cool and bracing compared with that of the coast-towns. The traveller who wishes to become acquainted with Georgian town-life cannot do better than stay in Kutaïs a month or two. About five miles off is the monastery of Gelati, built in the tenth century, and renowned as the burial-place of the glorious Queen Tamara. From Kutaïs a journey may be made to Svaneti, the last Caucasian state conquered by Russia, and even now only nominally a part of the Tsar's dominions; Mr. Wolley's book, "Savage Svanetia," will give the intending visitor some idea of the sport that may be had in that wild region. The road across the Caucasus from Kutaïs to Vladikavkaz is much higher and wilder than the famous Dariel road, and I much regret that I had not time to travel by it.