The mountain passes into Persia were reported impassable, and the line to Baku had for some days been blocked with snow.
My Russian Christmas (which falls, O.S., on our 6th of January) was not a cheerful one.

A prisoner in a stuffy bedroom of the Hotel de Londres, I sat at the window most of the day, consuming innumerable glasses of tea and cigarettes, watching the steadily falling snow, and wondering whether the weather would ever clear and allow me to escape from a place so full of unpleasant associations, and which had brought me so much disappointment and vexation.

The loud laughter and bursts of song that ascended every now and then from the crowded _salle-a-manger_ (for the Hotel de Londres is the "Maison Doree" of Tiflis) only served to increase my depression and melancholy.

Had there been a train available, I verily believe I should have taken a ticket then and there, and returned to England! But morning brings consolation in the shape of blue sky and dazzling sunshine.

The snow has ceased, apparently for good.