Just compare one of these beasts with a goods truck or a luggage van! Following the slope of the streets, I come out on the quays by the Koura, the bed of which divides the town into two unequal parts.

On each side rise the houses, one above the other, each one looking over the roof of its neighbors.

In the neighborhood of the river there is a good deal of trade.

There you will find much moving about of vendors of wine, with their goatskins bellying out like balloons, and vendors of water with their buffalo skins, fitted with pipes looking like elephants' trunks.
Here am I wandering at a venture; but to wander is human, says the collegians of Bordeaux, as they muse on the quays of the Gironde.
"Sir," says a good little Jew to me, showing me a certain habitation which seems a very ordinary one, "you are a stranger ?" "Quite." "Then do not pass this house without stopping a moment to admire it." "And why ?" "There lived the famous tenor Satar, who sang the _contre-fa_ from his chest.

And they paid him for it!" I told the worthy patriarch that I hoped he would be able to sing a _contre-sol_ even better paid for; and I went up the hill to the right of the Koura, so as to have a view of the whole town.
At the top of the hill, on a little open space where a reciter is declaiming with vigorous gestures the verses of Saadi, the adorable Persian poet, I abandon myself to the contemplation of the Transcaucasian capital.