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BATUM TO TIFLIS 65
a great lake. Here and there one saw a clump of tall, slender
poplirs ; otherwise all was green fields devoid of trees. The
surrounding slopes looked for the most part dry ; they were
brown, with only afew green patches and no trees. Wc were
now in the heart of Georgia, in ancient times called Karthalinia,
the land of the Karthlians, or Karthvelians (i.e. Georgians).
Maize and various kinds of corn are grown on these plains,
also vines and fruit-trees ; in recent years tobacco has been
cultivated to some extent, as well as cotton, which used to
be grown in remote times in the Kura Valley.
Now and then wc saw a village : low stone cottages with
flat roofs. But these cottages looked uncommonly like
roofless ruins, being half-buried underground to keep them
warmer during the cold Caucasian winter. The villages were
surrounded by leafy orchards and vineyards which rest and
refresh the eye in this treeless plain. Wc noticed vegetables
and cherries.
The tram stopped at a station above the town of Gori,
which is situated on the opposite side of the Kura and has
an old castle on a steep cliff. Most of the inhabitants are
Armenians, descendants of those who are said to have been
brought here in the twelfth century by the Georgian king,
David the Renovator. They now talk Georgian, but with
true Armenian obstinacy have refused to give up their
Gregorian faith. The town has often been sacked and
destroyed by Persians and Turks, and here, as everywhere,
there are ruins of bygone times.
A little way to the east of Gori is the old cave-town or
fortress of Uplis-zikhe (i.e. the castle of lords), likewise on
the north side of the Kura. In the upper part of the sloping
face of the cliff large and small rooms have been hewn out
at different levels above each other, some of them connected
by passages. A good deal of the work is so rough that it
may well date from very remote times ; but there are also
attempts at architecture of a more developed kind, with
vaulted roofs, rounded arches, and decorations which
Lehmann-Haupt l believes to date from the fourth century
a.d. The rooms appear to be part of a fortress. According
C. F. Lehmann-Haupt, Armenien Eitist und Jet^t, vol. i, pp. 101 ff., 1910.
E
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