in value a little over L10,000,000 annually,
though showing a tendency to increase slightly. By far the most
important commodity is petroleum, fully one-half of the total value. In
addition large quantities are shipped at Baku direct for the Volga and
the Transcaspian port of Krasnovodsk. The export that comes next in
value is silk, and after it may be named wheat, barley, manganese ore,
maize, wool, oilcake, carpets, rye, oats, liquorice and timber. The
import trade reaches nothing like the same value, and what there is is
confined almost entirely to Batum. The annual average vahie may be put
at not quite L2,000,000, machinery and tin-plate being a long way the
most important items. There is further a small transit trade through
Transcaucasia from Persia to the value of less than half a million
sterling annually, and chiefly in carpets, cocoons and silk, wool, rice
and boxwood; and further a sea-borne trade between Persia and Caucasian
ports (Baku and Petrovsk) to the value of over 1-1/2 millions sterling
in all. The very extensive internal trade with Russia can only be
mentioned.

_Railways_.--The principal approach to Caucasia from Russia by rail is
the line that runs from Rostov-on-Don to Vladikavkaz at the foot of the
central Caucasus range. Thence, or rather from the junction of Beslan,
14 m. north of Vladikavkaz, the main line proceeds east of Petrovsk on
the Caspian, and from Petrovsk skirts the shore southwards as far as
Baku, the distance from Vladikavkaz to Baku being 414 m. This railway,
together with the driving roads over the Caucasus mountains via the
Mamison pass (the Ossetic military road) and the Darial pass (the
Georgian military road), and the route across the Black Sea to Poti or
Batum are the chief means of communication between southern Russia and
Transcaucasia. Baku and Batum (also Poti) are connected by another main
line, 560 m. long, which traverses the valleys of the Kura and the Rion,
south of the Caucasus. From Tiflis, nearly midway on this last line, a
railway proceeds south as far as Erivan (234 m.), with a branch to Kars
(48 m.). The Erivan line is being continued into Persia, namely, to
Tabriz via Julfa on the Aras.

_History_.--To the ancient Greeks Caucasia, and the mighty range which
dominates it, were a region of mystery and romance. It was there that
they placed the scene of the sufferings of Prometheus (_vide_ Aeschylus,
_Prometheus Vinctus_), and there, in the land of Colchis, w