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THE CAUCASUS A GRAND MILITARY BASE.

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experienced since 1878 at the hands of the Turks, is too sorrowful and sickening a subject for me to dilate upon here. They exercise no power; their development is checked; and the hatred they entertain towards the Turks renders them a source of weakness to the country. In Russia and the Caucasus there are 850,000 Armenians, who are treated as equals of the Russians, enjoy every privilege the latter possess, and can rise to any post in the State, as witness the autocratic powers conferred on Loris Melikoff in 1880. Tiflis is the centre of their commercial and literary activity; the presses there are continually turning out translations of the masterpieces of European literature; and they maintain four monthly reviews-the Ararat, Nordz, Aikikan, and Ashkar, and four newspapers, the Mshak, Megoo, Psak, and Gortz. The latter possess correspondents throughout Asiatic Turkey, and serve as a mouthpiece for their grievances. It is quite natural, therefore, that Tiflis should manifest a deep interest in what goes on in our Asia Minor Protectorate. To Tiflis, Erzeroum is a sort of second Bulgaria, which the next conflict should place in her keeping. The Armenians there watch events at Erzeroum as keenly as the Russians used to regard them in the Balkan provinces. Every Turkish outrage is exaggerated, and made a peg for agitation by the Armenian Press, and it is affirmed that the Russian higher authorities are not altogether innocent of stimulating the feeling against Turkey. As for the local officials, a fresh crusade would be exceedingly popular.

The Caucasus is a grand military base for Russia. From it radiate roads to the most important objective points in the East. No barrier now exists to a direct march from Tiflis and Kars upon Constantinople. By taking a direction a little more to the south, a Caucasian army can cut the trade routes of Asia Minor

and occupy the Euphrates valley, through which England will some day require to make a railway to India. A third highway takes an invading force to Teheran to stamp out the Persian monarchy, and push down to the Persian Gulf. By proceeding due east, across the Caspian, two parallel roads are open to a Caucasian advance upon Herat, either via Astrabad and Meshed, or Krasnovodsk, Askabad and Sarakhs; and the reader does not need to be reminded where an army would ultimately get to, if it marched beyond Herat.

The Caucasus base, garrisoned by 150,000 troops in time of peace and 350,000 in time of war, is not maintained without a heavy drain on the Russian exchequer. The deficit, as I have said, is never less than a million a year. But this large figure could be easily reduced to a considerable extent by carrying out the long promised administrative reforms. Besides having to support a huge army, the Caucasus is required to maintain a swarm of heavily paid functionaries, several times in excess of its wants, and notorious even in Russia for possessing the worst traits of an ill-regulated bureaucracy. The Orenburg base was "revised" in 1880, and after a host of incapable and corrupt officials had been pensioned or punished, the staff was cut down, and the annual deficit extinguished. Last year Turkestan underwent a similar purging, and although in this case the deficit was not altogether removed, still it was very much lessened, and the administrative service rendered of greater utility to the natives. The turn of the Caucasus will come next. One of these days a Senator will go forth from St. Petersburg armed with full powers, and those officials who have been lazy and corrupt will shake in their shoes and have a very bad time of it.

THE RAILWAY TO BAKU.

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CHAPTER X.

FROM TIFLIS TO BAKU.

The New Railway from Tiflis to Baku-Strategical Results of the ConstructionDeparture from Tiflis-Transformation Scene the next morning-Views of the Elisavetopol Steppes-The Caucasus Range-Mount Ararat-Refusal of the Armenians to believe that any man has ever attained the summit-Delights of a morning meal off a water-melon-The Melon as a Fruit-A free-and-easy mode of Railway travelling-Atrocious pace on the Transcaucasian RailwayDeficit in working the line-The Valley of the River Kura-The Transcaucasian Irrigation System-German Colonies in the Elisavetopol District-Adji Cabul, and the projected Russian Railway to Teheran-The line described-The future Railways to the Persian Gulf and India-Alayat, the second terminus on the Caspian-A Night Ride along the Caspian Coast to the Apsheron Peninsula.

WHEN the war of 1877-78 broke out between Russia and Turkey, it took the former Power nearly a month to move troops from the Caspian littoral to Tiflis. A few months later, when the tribes in Daghestan rose against the Russians and menaced the security of the region about Petrovsk, it occupied a relieving force three weeks to get from Tiflis to the Caspian, even with extraordinary efforts on the part of the commanding general. A few months ago the new railway to Baku was opened for traffic, and all this hard travelling was at once reduced to a matter of twenty-two hours. In this manner, the journey from one sea to the other, across Transcaucasia, which a decade ago occupied, travelling express, nearly a fortnight, has been reduced to thirty-six hours, and might, if the present slow service were accelerated, be shortened to within the limits of a day. In the interval Turkey has done nothing to improve her com

munications between her capital and Armenia. Russia, therefore, has increased her power in Transcaucasia to an extent that must tell with crushing effect on the issue of the next campaign. This circumstance alone would almost justify the deficit incurred by constructing the railway from Batoum to Baku. But the new railway has done something more than merely enable Russia to throw her military resources with equal facility towards the Caspian or Black Sea, and ahead into Armenia -it has laid open to Europe the immense petroleum supply of Baku, and secured Russia the market of the world for it. It was a misfortune for me, perhaps, that I saw the Baku railway rather early in its career. It had only been opened a month or two, and while the old Persian goods' traffic had been suddenly snatched from it by the suppression of the European transit trade across the Caucasus, the arrangements for the despatch of petroleum had not been sufficiently matured to allow of the deficiency being made good. Hence we travelled the 341 miles from Tiflis to Baku with only a score of passengers, and met only a similar return consignment and a couple of oil trains the whole of the way—traffic insufficient to pay the expenses of the odd forty-one miles, let alone the remaining three hundred.

The train from Batoum arrives at Tiflis at 10.25 at night and leaves at 11.11. The greater part of the passengers quit it there, and the few that go further on alight for the most part at the town of Elisavetopol. We had no difficulty, therefore, in securing excellent seats and making ourselves comfortable for the night. The carriages on the line have an ingenious arrangement for sleeping, which might be easily copied in our English carriages. The cushioned back lifts up like the leaf of a table, and enables a person to lie down full length above the ordinary seat. These we found such

ON THE ELISAVETOPOL PLAINS.

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excellent couches that we passed Elisavetopol at halfpast six the next morning fast asleep, and did not wake until we were approaching the Adjinaoor steppe, a couple of hours later on.

Quite a transformation scene greeted us when we put our heads out of the window. We were traversing a country which bore no resemblance to anything we had previously passed through since our departure from London. Around us was a sort of plain of fuller's earth-so dry was the loam that it seemed as though one might dig for yards without coming upon a vestige of moisture. Dotting it here and there were small straggling oases of trees, enclosing a thatched village, and connected one with the other by a low ridge running across the plain, marking the course of an irrigation canal. Now and again we passed one of these canals, the turbid waters of which were sluggishly moving at the bottom of a deep and arid cutting. Occasionally flocks and herds could be seen browsing on the scanty grass close to the oases, the shepherds protected from the fierce rays of the sun by a thatch over a dwarf conning post, constructed on the trunk of a tree. The plain itself bore no vegetation, except a little camel thorn, on which alongside a track camels from a halted caravan could be seen at times feeding. Once or twice we passed horsemen riding across the country-fierce and swarthy men, with Eastern khalats, or robes like dressing-gowns, and a huge black sheepskin buzbee. Most of them carried a rifle, and all of them a dagger, for the lower valley of the Kura is still notorious for its brigandage, owing to its proximity to the unsettled Kurdish border of Persia. Such was the aspect of the plain which stretched away on both sides of the railway to a mountain ridge; one of them—the Caucasus-running in an even course parallel with the

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