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ARMENIA AND THE NEAR EAST
100
The lot of the serf was certainly no better in Russia and
Europe.
Chardin has a good deal to say in praise of East Georgia ;
he found the food excellent, with the best bread and fruit in
the world, and an ample variety of fish, meat, and any amount
of game ; the wine, too, was splendid, the women still more
so. Of the latter he says : "To see them without loving
them I consider impossible. One cannot imagine more
entrancing faces or more beautiful limbs than those of the
Georgian women. They are tall and slim, without being
disfigured by fat. The only thing that spoils them is the
paint on their faces."
Many Georgians, especially of the leading families, had to
go into exile in hard times, and they went by preference to
Russia. But the Georgians never became a migratory people,
and in this respect were strikingly different from their neigh
bours the Armenians. The Georgians were too fond of their
hornes—of their valleys and mountains—to be happy long
away from them, and this affection for the soil has found
beautiful expression in the descriptions of nature in their
poetry. Moreover, the Georgians were mostly farmers, and
had not the skill in trade and handicrafts which enabled the
Armenians to thrive in foreign surroundings.
In the seventeenth century Kakhetia and Karthlia had
several able and patriotic kings who endeavoured to invigorate
the national life and civilization of the people, to raise the
Church from the depths to which it had sunk, and to resist
the power and influence of Persia. Teymuras lof Kakhetia
(1605-1663), a type of poet-adventurer, was a man of parts
and a brave commander, with the best traits of the old
fashioned Georgian knight. He fought against the powerful
and cruel Shah Abbas of Persia, who devastated the country
several times, and punished the Georgians ruthlessly for trying
to shake off the Persian yoke. Teymuras was the first of a
series of notable authors and authoresses of the royal house
of the Bagratids, who participated vigorously for nearly two
hundred years in the revival of intellectual life in Georgia,
which gradually evolved a distinctive and interesting national
literature, with several poets of real eminence. The most
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