have got to say of particular parts of the country, such as Tiflis, the capital, and Armenia, is reserved for later chapters.

Transcaucasia is a convenient general name for the countries lying between the Black Sea, the Caspian, and the Caucasus, which make up the dominions of the Czar in Western Asia. It is not, however, an official Russian name, for although for some purposes they distinguish Ciscaucasia and Transcaucasia, the administrative district or lieutenancy of the empire which they call the Caucasus (Kavkaz) includes not only the regions south of the mountains, but also several governments lying to the north, in what the geographers call Europe. Nor does it denote any similarity or common character in these countries, the chief of which are Georgia, which lies along the upper course of the Kur, south of the Caucasus; Armenia, farther south, on the Araxes, between Georgia, Persia, and Turkey; Imeritia, west of Georgia; and Mingrelia, west of Imeritia, along the eastern coast of the Black Sea. However, it is a convenient name, and before speaking of each of these countries by itself, something may be said of the general physical features of Transcaucasia as a whole. It may be broadly described as consisting of two mountain regions and two plains. First, all along the north, there are the slopes of the Caucasus, which on this side (at least in its western half, for towards the east the main chain sinks quite abruptly into the levels of Kakhitia) sends off several lateral ranges descending far from the axis, and at last subsiding into a

fertile and well-peopled hilly country. Secondly, on the south, over against the Caucasus, there is another mountain land, less elevated, but wider in extent, consisting of the chain which under various local. names (some geographers have called it the AntiCaucasus) runs from Lazistan at the south-east angle of the Black Sea away to the east and south-east till it meets the ranges of Persia. Towards the south, this chain ramifies all over Armenia, and here attains its greatest height in the volcanic summits of Ala Göz, 13,460 feet above the sea, while northward its spurs form a hilly country stretching to Tiflis. These two mountain masses are connected by a ridge which, branching off from the Caucasus between Elbruz and Kazbek, the two best known of all the summits of that chain, divides the waters of the Kur from those of the Rion (Phasis), and is crossed by the great road and railway from Tiflis to the Black Sea near the town of Suram. Although of no great height -it is only about 3600 feet at Suram-this ridge has a most important influence (to be referred to presently) both on the climate and on the ethnology of the country. It is that which Strabo speaks of as inhabited by the Moschici,' and is sometimes, therefore, called by modern geographers the Meschic ridge.

The two plains I have spoken of are of very unequal size. The eastern extends all along the Caspian, from the southern foot of the Caucasus to the

1 Interpreters, from the time of Josephus downwards (who places them more towards Cappadocia), have sought to identify these Moschici or Meschi (as Procopius calls them, Goth. iv. 3) with the Mesech of the Bible (Gen. x. 2; Ps. cxx. 5).

Persian frontier, and runs up the valley of the Kur, gradually rising, to within a few miles of Tiflis. It is open, bare, and dry; is, in fact, what the Russians call steppe country, or the Americans prairie, through nearly its whole extent, and though the soil is fertile, much of it, especially towards the Caspian, is but thinly peopled or cultivated. The western plain, on the other hand, lying along the lower course of the Rion, between the Caucasus, the Anti-Caucasus, and the Black Sea, is moist and densely wooded, parts of it little better than a forest swamp, but the whole, where dry enough for tillage, extremely rich. It has all the appearance of having been, at no distant period, a bay of the Euxine, which may gradually have got filled up by the alluvium brought down by the Rion and other Caucasian streams. When this bay existed, and when the Caspian, which we know to have greatly shrunk, even in comparatively recent times, extended far up the valley of the Kur, and was joined to the Euxine north of the Caucasus, between the mouths of the Kuban and Terek, the Caucasus itself formed an immense mountain peninsula, joined to the highlands of Western Asia by an isthmus consisting of the Suram ridge already referred to and the elevated country east of it. And as at this time the Caspian was also, no doubt, connected with the Sea of Aral (which is only some 160 feet above the present level of the Caspian, and about 80 above the ocean), one may say that the Mediterranean then extended through this chain of inland seas, far into Central Asia, perhaps to the sites

of those cities, Khiva, Tashkend, Bokhara, of which we have lately heard so much.

The climates of these two plains are strangely contrasted, and the ridge of Suram marks the boundary between them. On the Black Sea coast the winters are mild (mean winter temperature about 44° F., mean annual temperature 58°), snow falls, perhaps, but hardly lies, all sorts of southern plants thrive in the open air, and the rainfall is so abundant that vegetation is everywhere, even up in the mountains, marvellously profuse. At Poti, the seaport at the mouth of the Rion which every traveller from the West is condemned to pass through, the most feversmitten den in all Asia, one feels in a perpetual vapour bath, and soon becomes too enervated to take the most obvious precautions against the prevailing malady. Higher up, in the deep valleys of the Ingur and Kodor, rivers which descend from the great chain, the forests are positively tropical (though the vegetation itself is European) in the splendour of the trees and the rank luxuriance of the underwood. If there were a few roads and any enterprise, this country might drive a magnificent trade in wood and all sorts of natural productions.

This is the general character of the Black Sea coast. But when you cross the Meschic watershed at Suram, and enter the basin of the Kur, drawing towards the Caspian, everything changes. The streams are few, the grass is withered on the hillside, by degrees even the beechwoods begin to disappear; and as one gets farther and farther to the east, beyond Tiflis, there is

in autumn hardly a trace of vegetation either on plain or hills, except along the courses of the shrunken rivers and on the northern slopes of the mountains that divide the basins of the Kur and Aras. In these very severe, and the summer At Lenkoran, on the Caspian, sea is often blocked with ice

regions the winter is heats are tremendous. in latitude 38° N., the for two miles from the shore, and the average winter temperature is the same as that of Maestricht, in latitude 51°, or Reykjavik (in Iceland), in latitude 64°. The rainfall, which near Poti reaches 63 inches in the year, is at Baku only 137, and in some parts of the Aras valley only 5 inches. The explanation, of course, is that, while the moist westerly winds are arrested by the ridge at Suram, the eastern steppe lies open to the parching and bitter blasts which descend from Siberia and the frozen plains of Turkestan, while the scorching summers are not moderated by the influence of a neighbouring sea, the Caspian being too small to make any great difference in the climate.

In Armenia the same causes operate, with the addition that, as a good deal of the country stands at a great height above the sea-level, the winters are in those parts long and terrible. At Alexandropol, for instance, the great Russian fortress over against Kars, where a large part of her army is always stationed, snow lies till the middle of April, spring lasts only about a fortnight, and during summer the country is parched like any desert.1

1 The mean winter temperature of Alexandropol is 16° F.; its annual rainfall 1468 inches.