Note 4 — Chapter IV · TO AKHALKALAKI

A motley group of people collected about us; of what race, of what faith? Mussulmans! We expected and received the answer, although there was little except our knowledge of the checkered history of these valleys to indicate their adhesion to Islam. The owner of the garden bore the name of Bin Ali Bey Vishnadzi, and was of mixed Georgian and Turkish blood; he stands in the centre of my illustration, in Cossack dress, with his cap on one side (Fig. 17). His cast of countenance is Georgian, and the hair is somewhat fair; yet his uncle, Hasan Bey, has the Turkish type. His mixed ancestry is no exception among the villagers, and they all call themselves Turks. Their number was given to me as 1500, with 200 houses; the Russian census, which classes them as Georgians, bears out these figures as approximately correct.4 Among them are a handful of Armenian Christians; the old man with a staff, seated in the foreground of my picture, was our guide from the road to our pleasant camping-ground, and belonged to the Armenian race.