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BATUM TO TIFLIS 67
palace ; then again at Vardzia—wherever there was anything
beautiful, wonderful, reminiscent of past glories, it was
Thamara’s ! Puissant Queen of Georgia—the very sound of
your nåme breathes the romance of the East and epitomizes
Georgia’s golden age. Under the sunshine of your glance
it unfolded and blossomed, while with your doughty knights
you extended the frontiers and built up the nation. To a
Georgian this proud-spirited woman stands as the embodiment
of the past glories of his country.
On the other side of the Kura, where the river Aragva
joins it, is Mtskhetha, the ancient capital, where the Georgian
kings resided until the end of the fifth century a.d. The town
is not an impressive one to-day, consisting of a duster of
mean houses without orchards, trees, or anything green, on
the tongue of land formed by the confluence of the two
rivers ; but high above the houses towers the stately old
cathedral which for nearly fifteen hundred years was the
ecclesiastical and spiritual centre of the Georgian nation.
Many of the kings of East Georgia lic buried there.
Through the Aragva Valley, between steep mountains, wc
caught a glimpse of another world to the north, the richly
wooded Saguramo Valley, with the blue and snow-capped
mountains of the Caucasus beyond. On the high, steep
mountain-top opposite Mtskhetha, on the other side of Aragva,
was the old church of the Holy Cross, with ruined walls
round it like an impregnable fortress, giving the landscape
a still more mediæval and old-world appearance. Down on
the level below this cliff a great work was in progress. An
enormous dam was being built across the river in connection
with a new power-station which was to supply Tiflis with
about 20,000 h.p. Here the past and the coming age met.
Tiflis.
Wc were approaching Tiflis, a bare treeless valley with
stony slopes on either side—not exactly one’s idea of the
capital of such a picturesque country as Georgia. Far away
on a level piece of ground under the mountain-side on the
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