Note 5 — Chapter III · TO AKHALTSYKH

The inhabitants of Akhaltsykh are censused at 15,000—at the time of our visit the registered figure was 15,120, although the latest tabulated statistics which Colonel Alander was able to show me gave a total of 15,914 for 1891. This total was divided in the following manner, according to religion and race: Gregorian Armenians, 9620; Catholic Armenians, 2875; Georgians and Russians, excluding the garrison, 782; Roman Catholics, 97; and 2540 Jews. I cannot help thinking that the proportion of Armenians is excessive, and that the governor has included among those of the Catholic persuasion a considerable number of Armenian Catholics who are of Georgian race. At Kutais I had been informed by a Roman Catholic priest that I should find among the communion of the Armenian Catholics at Akhaltsykh many Georgians whose ancestors had been devout Catholics and had become united to the Armenian Catholics, as the nearest Catholic Church, when the Georgian Church followed the Greek in cutting off relations with Rome. The Georgian kings forbade them to hold their services in Georgian, which had been their practice previously. These men were no doubt the converts of the old Roman Catholic missions; it is known that at the commencement of the thirteenth century the kings of Georgia were in correspondence with the popes, and that these communications and the despatch of missionaries to Georgia were continued in the following century.5 The published statistics of 1886 give the number of Georgians as 2730 souls, and evidently include the large majority of them among the Roman Catholics. It is therefore probable that both lists fall into error, and that of the two the published table is the more reliable in all that concerns distinction of race. I append it in a footnote,6 and have only to add in this connection that in both lists the number of males exceeds that of females, and that for this reason the totals are in general too small. In Colonel Alander’s list the male population amounts to 8335, in the published list to 8480 souls. The women must be at least as numerous as the men, although, owing to Eastern prejudices, they are much more difficult to count.