Note 1 — Chapter IV · TO AKHALKALAKI

At Akhalkalaki we had reached a country which is peopled in large preponderance by the Armenian race. The town is the centre of an administrative division (ouezde), which is dependent upon the Government of Tiflis. This division is partitioned into two administrative districts, of which the most northerly takes its name from the village of Baralet, on the way to Lake Tabizkhuro; while the more southerly is called the district of Bogdanovka, a Russian settlement on the road to Alexandropol. The population of the division amounts to a total, according to the published statistics, of 59,500 souls; or, according to the figures which were kindly communicated to me by the Governor, of 66,000 souls. The numbers of the Armenians are given in the first of these lists as over 42,000, a proportion of seven-tenths of the whole; while in the Governor’s list, which, I presume, is the most recent, they are censused at 58,000, a proportion of seven-eighths. I am inclined to place more reliance on the total furnished by the Governor than upon his subdivision according to race; and I shall conclude that the Georgians contribute a sixth of the inhabitants and the Russian settlers something less than a tenth. These figures do not comprise the town of Akhalkalaki, which, out of a total population of something over 4000, contains 4000 Armenian inhabitants.1