The Crimea and Transcaucasia; being the Narrative of a Journey in the Kouban, in Gouria, Georgia, Armenia, Ossety, Imeritia, Swannety, and Mingrelia, and in the Tauric Range

Abstract

THE author of this work took advantage of a three years' residence in Southern Russia to make acquaintance with the region to which his work refers, and which is pretty adequately indicated in the title. He does not, however, give a regular narrative of the visit he made to various places at various times, but arranges all the information he has collected along a route supposed to occupy ninety-two days. In this way a large tract of ground is gone over systematically, commencing at Sevastopol, visiting the surrounding district, coasting and touching at several places in the Crimea, crossing over to Circassia, coasting south to Poti, and penetrating through Mingrelia, Imeritia, and Georgia, south to Mount Ararat, and as far north as the country of the Ossety and the Swannety. Although no doubt many travellers pass through these countries, yet they have really been little explored, and in Commander Telfer's work will be found much information that, we are sure, will be new to the majority of readers. His account of the Swannety, especially, a curious mongrel, half savage people, to the north of Mingrelia, will be somewhat of a surprise to many. But the author has trusted not only to his own observations; he has taken evidently great pains to make himself master of all that is known of the history and antiquities of the region to which his work refers. This information he judiciously mixes up with his own observations, and the result is a work which may be regarded as a standard book of reference for the extremely interesting districts to which it refers. With its two good maps and its many illustrations, and its substantial and attractively put together information, it ought to take a prominent place among works of travel.