National Institute of Informatics - Digital Silk Road Project
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Overland to India : vol.1 |
14 OVERLAND TO INDIA
CHAP.
Russian, but the other two men probably did not learn a single word of Swedish all the time.
On the afternoon of the 5th we attended an assembly with dancing at the club for the benefit of the town school, which has no other resources but a subsidy of two hundred roubles from the State. Here were to be seen specimens of Poti citizens, officers, Russian civilians, worn and ill both in body and soul, and countrymen, Georgians, Gurians, Imeretians, Mingrelians, Abkhazians, Armenians, etc. Natives were most numerous, Russians comparatively few. The picturesque Georgian dances, with their peculiar rapid and pliant movements, were executed to the strains of strange and monotonous music. A gentleman and a lady, fair as an angel, danced together ; she skimmed noiselessly as a sylph over the floor, raising herself on her toes as she flew on with inconceivable rapidity—she seemed not to move her legs and feet but to glide smoothly along, holding her hands to her sides, and bearing her head nobly and gracefully like a queen of the Caucasus. The cavalier followed her with coaxing and inviting gestures, while she always retreated and avoided
him. The spectators clapped their hands and kept the t~
time, urging on the dancers to greater speed and endur-
ance. They amused themselves as well as they could, the
poor creatures who were deported to Poti, but their dance
was splendid to look at, and in comparison European
dances are by no means artistic displays of plastic grace. 1
Characteristic of such a genuine Russian sobranye evening
were the loud screaming at the buffet, the ring of glasses
filled with red wine, beer, or vodka, the polluted and overheated air, the hermetically closed windows, which jealously separated us from the autumn air outside.
On Nov. 6 we were thoroughly roused by a tremendous downpour of rain, with thunder and lightning. One clap was so violent that the Colonel started and exclaimed, " A bomb." The sky was covered with dense masses of
cloud, which came drifting over Poti in leaden-grey and dark-blue cumuli, discharging shower after shower, so that
the pools incessantly increased in size. We drove down to the harbour and watched the waves break over the
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