Tiflis is thirteen hundred and fifty feet above the level of the sea, and the point where the railway reaches its greatest elevation is eighteen hundred feet higher, or thirty-two hundred feet in all. The grades are very steep; there is one stretch of eight miles where it is two hundred and
LOOKING DOWN ON THE STEPPE.
forty feet to the mile, and for a considerable distance it exceeds one hundred feet to the mile. It is proposed to overcome the steepest grade by a long tunnel which would reduce the highest elevation to little more than two thousand feet.
Our friends reached Tiflis in the evening, after an interesting ride, in spite of the monotony of the desert portion of the route. Frank will tell us the story of their visit to the famous city of the Caucasus.
"We were somewhat disappointed," said he, "with our first view of Tiflis. We had an impression that it was in the centre of a fertile plain
