War and Revolution in Asiatic Russia
the Black Sea coast and the sub-arctic conditions of the Armenian plateau. The vine flourishes, along with cereals, without irrigation, on a rich and easily tilled soil. Forests on the hill-sides assist the husbandry of man. The Georgians, who are the most important representatives of the native races of the isthmus, are thus favoured by nature with an even climate and a good soil. They have in times past reached a high degree of wealth and culture. The absence of the unmeasured luxury of the oases of Persia has prevented them from developing an excessive esthetic tendency. The comparative ease with which they can gather the produce of their cornfields and vineyards contrasts with the difficulties besetting the Armenian peasants on the Van plateau. They are therefore a more easygoing people, with a gentler and more pleasant nature than the Armenians. A temperate climate and a condition of moderate ease, together with intercourse with the West, makes the Georgian very similar in type to the Roumanian, the Servian and the Little Russian. Some, however, of the Western Georgians (Imeretians, Gurians and Mingrelians) show a marked resemblance to the Greek cultural type. Living on the sea-board in constant contact with the Greeks, these people have developed the commercial instinct, and the political, controversial type of mind. But the inhabitants of the rolling hill-country between Kutais and Tiflis are more quiescent in temper. The impressions of nature around them, the sight: of waving cornfields, shady vineyards, forested hills and distant snow-mountains, have become woven into their lives, and have given them the strain of mysticism characteristic of the
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