The Portland daily press. [volume] (Portland, Me.) 1862-1921, 1877-06-22
TranScaucaSia.

If it is hard to convey an impression of the
possibly is that it has not one general charac-
ter, but two or three. 1t is like a mixed tissue,
whose color seems to vary according as the
light falls in this way or in that upon it.
There is no place in Europe except Constanti-
nople, and probably few places in the world,
where.one feels IN the middle so to speak, of
so many cross currents, so many diverse asso-
Citations of the past and possibilities for the
future. Perhaps this puzzling, pleasing COM
plexity, creating desire to predict as we'll as
to explain, and sense of the difficulty of pre-
diction, is the thing which makes the country
so full of interest 1t is Eastern-Eastern not
only in the dry, bare, glowing landscape, II
speak chiefly of the Caspian basin), but in the
look of the villages. the bazaars, the agrcul-
ture, the sense of immobility. Yet many ORR
entail features are wanting. 1t is Christian, to
begin with. The ruined castles of the nobility,
with peasants dwellings clustering beneath
them, have an air of Western feudalism. Ia
the large towns and along the great roads one
feels the influence of Russia, and the influence
OF Russia, specifically at least, suggests the
with men in uniform; the hotels, where the
town is big enough to have more than
wretched duchdn or public house,
are kept by Frenchmen. You have intelli-
gence and polish in the towns, and in the couu.
try the blankest ignorance and the most prim-
tive rudeness. The telegraphic wire runs
along road on each side of which there lie
regions almost unexplored, whose Inhabitants
worship unknown deities and speak unknown
tongues. This contrast gives all the idea of a
new country, like Western America or one of
our colonies yet here one feels at every step
that the country is old, with civilization,
which, though it never blossomed never quite
withered up-a civilization older than our
own Seeing the ancient churches and castles,
most of which have some legend attached to
| them, (though such legends are as seldom poet
| ical as they are trustworthy one has an odd
| sort of sense of being in land which has had
| history, but history that never emerged
| from twilight, which nobody knows, and which
| is, perhaps hardly worth the knowing. In
| Eastern Russia and Siberia one acquiesces in
| the fact that there never was any history; the
| past is blank and must remain so. In Asia
| Minor, on the other hand, one is within the
| circle of Greek and Roman civilization; every
| body, from Herodotus downward, has some
| thing to tell to its cities and peoples. But
| Georgia, and the regions Immediately around
| it, have been always the frontier land OF light
| and darkness, battlefield of hostile empires
| and religions first of the Roman Empire and
the Persians, then of Christianity and fire.
worship, then of Christianity and Islam, then
| of Persians and Turks, lastly of Russia against
| both the Sultan and the Shah. One finds
traces in the buildings and the art of the people
| of all these Influences of the Greek traders
| who frequented the markets of the Euxine; of
| the Byzantine Emperor, who held sometimes
more, sometime less of the country, Justinian
having pushed forward his garrisons as far as
the Darrell pass; of the Genoese, WHO monopo.