Robert Mignan, A winter journey through Russia, the Caucasian Alps, and Georgia (1830) - Part 1

In the late 1820s, Captain Robert Mignan served in the 1st Bombay European Regiment and commanded the escort attached to the resident of the  British East India Company. In the fall of 1829 he departed, with his wife, two children and servants, from London to return to his military duties in Western India. He decided to reach his destination through the Russian Empire and first sailed to St. Petersburg, where he landed in late October. He was soon informed that prince Khosrow, the son of Crown Prince Abbas Mirza of Persia, was about to return to tehran and solicited his permission to accompany him on his return journey. During one of the receptions organized at Prince Golitsyn's estate, Mignan came across the famed German traveler Alexander Humboldt who had just returned from his expedition to the Ural Mountains. At Humboldt's suggestion, Mignon decided to explore the western coastline of the Caspian Sea and during the winter of 1829 he traveled to the Caucasus, followed the "more fearfully rugged road than any over which we had ever passed" through the mountains and reached Tiflis in January 1830. He spent severals days in Tiflis before travelling through eastern Georgia on his way to northwestern Iran. In 1839 he published his travelogue "A winter journey through Russia, the Caucasian Alps, and Georgia."

We left the sublime chain of "frosty Caucasus" in the rear, covered with perpetual snows; and, following the course of the sluggish Koor [Kura/Mtkvari], in a south-easterly direction, entered at once upon the plains of the ancient Iberia, which lay spread out before us, till lost in the blue haze of distance. The prospect was a most uninteresting and even depressing one, for every passing cloud sprinkled flakes of snow on our track, and momentarily threatened a heavy fall. Our road wound through a succession of low argillaceous [containing clay] and gravelly hills, at no great distance from the river, near which we saw some remains of Georgian architecture. The village of Saganlook [Soghanlugh], situated about ten miles distant from Tiflis, was the place marked out for the termination of our first day's march. The houses, if they can be so called, were wretched in the extreme; we could scarcely distinguish them from the inequalities of the surrounding ground—a method of construction adopted, perhaps, on account of the severity of the climate. Their construction corresponded exactly with those mentioned by Xenophon in the Anabasis, or expedition of Cyrus into Persia. The rooms were all beneath the surface of the earth, so that we were obliged to descend by a ladder, or by steps cut out of the calcareous sand-stone bank, which formed the side of these sepulchral abodes.

In this particular part of Georgia the excavating a hut is a work of easy accomplishment. A circular pit is dug, and with the debris and unhewn stones the sides are formed. Over this well-shaped excavation they lay rafters, and on these again, earth. In walking over a village, it would be difficult to tell whether you were on a house-top or on the bare ground, if it were not for the circular perforations which are made in the centre of the roofs to admit light and air. All these subterranean habitations are exceedingly dark, and if the aperture overhead be closed, the inmates would be stifled with the smoke of their wood fires, and an unfortunate stranger, in his evening promenade, be grilled and dished in the course of a few seconds, to the horror of the cuisinier, at his sudden entree by the chimney.

One of these chambers was appropriated to us, the inmates having been most unceremoniously turned out for the night. Our servant had just commenced spreading out the carpets, and laying our bedding upon them, when down rushed a whole squad of goats, donkeys, and sheep, who knew their dormitory much better than we did, and who proceeded to possess themselves of that portion of the dwelling which they always occupied. In so doing they raised a dust most offensive to persons whose beds were being made on the ground. We were much shocked at the intrusion, but thought it better to let them remain than raise a new dust by endeavouring to eject them.