Dig izsd by Google has been extensively raised at Poti from seed, with every promise of success.' No further efforts are being made to elevate the entire site upon which the town is built and is extending, but the effects oF the noxious exhalations are partly counteracted by the construction of the houses, which are principally of wood, on huge It^s, so that their floors are raised 5 feet or. 6 feet above the ground, while the superstratum of the roads and foot-paths is attended to. Ditches cross each other in all directions, and were they kept clear of deposits, would answer the purpose of drainage for which they are intended; they are full of frogs that croak hideously, creating an incessant clamour night and day. I asked our French landlord if any use was made of them: ' C'est bien dommage qu'il n'y a pas d'ltalicns ici — ils les mangeraient bien vite ma foi! ' was his keen reply.
The population of Poti is fluctuating, averaging, it is said, 8,000 souls independently of a garrison of 1,000 men, and is made up of Mingrelians, Gourias, a few Russians, Greeks, Armenians and Turks. Its prosperity depends upon transit trade, so that the number of inhabitants lessens or increases according to the changes in shipping and transit business, for there is no local produce. The town is consequently made up of hotels, traktyrs^ and lodginghouses. The chief exports are Indian com (maize), wool, alk, walnut-wood and bosses, and boxwood, cotton being sent into Russia; and the imports include manufactured goods, hardware, tin, sugar, salt, &c* Living is expensive, and money loans are seldom transacted at less than 1 5 to 20 per cent, interest
' The unusually severe winter of 1873-74 destroyed many of these young trees,
' Public-hous«s.
• From the returns al Poti for the year 1874: —
Imports 2,027,153 roubles.
,, for transit to Persia.. 782,715 „
Exports 4,636,263 „
[fragment illegible in the scan of the first edition]
Poti is the head-quarters ofa body of usurers, chiefly Armenians, into whose possession the property of the nobles of Mingrclia, Gouria, and Imeritia is rapidly passing. When those lords of the country were deprived of all authority over their peasantry, considerable pensions were awarded them in lieu; but unrestrained indulgence in a growing taste for comforts and luxuries ' has led to their becoming gradually involved in serious difficulties, resulting in the mortgage of their estates and houses at ruinous interests; and from never beii^^ in a position to repay the capital borrowed under extortionate terms, their properties remain in the hands of t!ie money-lenders, and they are glad to accept employment in the service of the State,'
The busy scene at Poti is at the market-place beyond the public gardens, where are a number of dirty stalls reeking with hot salmagundi and compounds offensive to the senses, eating- and coffeehouses, and numerous rude wooden erections in which tish, meat and vegetables are sold, and where salesmen hawk poultry, salted fish, cheese, hides, cotton goods, amber and jet ornaments, hornhandled knifes of curious make, and other objects.
If the death registers, which represent the mortality at Poti for the years 1872-73 to have been at the rate of one per cent, per annum, are to be relied on, then the climate of Poti is much maligned; but the swampy nature of the land upon which the town is built needs only to be seen, to satisfy the most credulous that such reports should be received with caution; and when 157 fatal cases of small-pox occurred during the epidemic in this town in the sprii^ of 1873. and frames already enfeebled by the climate
< Prince Bariatinsky is fsai, to have encouraged their extravagance by every means in his power when goveinor-general of the Caucasus.
» I Bin indebted to Mr. D. R. Peacock, U.S. Consul, for inrormotion on Poti.
by Google fell easy victims to the loathsome disease, the official return represented the number of those deaths at 40 only.