order ridge of the
Armenian highlands, fronts it on the south. The floor of the valley
slopes gently eastwards, from 1200 ft. at Tiflis to 500 ft. in the
middle, and to 85 ft. _below_ normal sea-level beside the Caspian. But
the uniformity of the slope is interrupted by a plateau (2000-3000 ft.
in altitude) along the southern foothills of the east central
Caucasus, in the region known as Kakhetia, drained by the Alazan, a
left-hand tributary of the Kura. The deep, short gorges and glens
which seam the southern slopes of the Caucasus are inhabited by
Ossetes, Tushes, Pshavs and Khevsurs in the west, and by various
tribes of Lesghians in the east. In these high and stony valleys every
available patch of ground is utilized for the cultivation of barley,
even up to altitudes of 7000 and 8000 ft. above the level of the sea;
but cattle-breeding is the principal resource of the mountaineers,
whose little communities are often separated from one another by
passes, few of which are lower than 10,000 ft. The steppes along the
bottom of the principal valley are for the most part too dry to be
cultivated without irrigation. It is only in Kakhetia, where numerous
mountain streams supply the fields and gardens of the plateau of
Alazan, that wheat, millet and maize are grown, and orchards,
vineyards and mulberry plantations are possible. Lower down the valley
cattle-breeding is the chief source of wealth, while in the small
towns and villages of the former Georgian kingdom various petty
trades, exhibiting a high development of artistic taste and technical
skill, are widely diffused. The slopes of the Armenian highlands are
clothed with fine forests, and the vine is grown at their base, while
on the wide-stretching steppes the Turko-Tatars pasture cattle, horses
and sheep. The lower part of the Kura valley assumes the character of
a dry steppe, the rainfall not reaching 14 in. annually at Baku, and
it is still less in the Mugan steppe, though quite abundant in the
adjacent region of Lenkoran. The vegetation of the steppe is on the
whole scanty. Trees are generally absent, except for thickets of
poplars, dwarf oaks and tamarisks along the course of the Kura, the
delta of which is smothered under a jungle of reeds and rushes. The
Mugan steppe is, however, in spite of its dryness, a more fertile
region in virtue of the irrigation practised; but the Kura has
excavated i