. British campaigns in the nearer East, 1914-1918. ple, as the Caucasus was concerned,it did not appear unreasonable to suppose that theRussians would not contemplate activities on a largescale until the spring of 1915. Quite possibly, therefore,they might be taken unawares. There is probably notan area in the world where campaigning in mid-winteris more hazardous or involves worse hardships than onthe vast and rugged tableland between the Black andthe Caspian Seas. Varying in height from 1,500 to5,000 feet above sea-level, its backbone a chain of loftypeaks, this great upland is in winter swe
. British campaigns in the nearer East, 1914-1918. ple, as the Caucasus was concerned,it did not appear unreasonable to suppose that theRussians would not contemplate activities on a largescale until the spring of 1915. Quite possibly, therefore,they might be taken unawares. There is probably notan area in the world where campaigning in mid-winteris more hazardous or involves worse hardships than onthe vast and rugged tableland between the Black andthe Caspian Seas. Varying in height from 1,500 to5,000 feet above sea-level, its backbone a chain of loftypeaks, this great upland is in winter swept by violentgales mostly accompanied by heavy falls of snow, which,freezing as it falls, lies many feet thick everywhere, andin the defiles and hollows forms drifts df great cold is so severe that the natives live during thewinter underground, in spacious excavations accommo-dating both themselves, their cattle and their the towns the country then presents the appear-ance of a limitless snow-bound solitude. Nowhere is 28. [To face page 28. BRITISH CAMPAIGNS IN THE NEARER EAST there a sign of life, save at rare intervals the smokefrom the fires of some underground village. North of the upland mass the level falls into a mightyhollow extending from the Caspian Sea to the Black Sea,the towering peaks of the main range of the Caucasusrising on the farther side of it, a wall of eternal to geologists, the Caspian Sea and the BlackSea once formed a united sheet of water. In this troughlies Tiflis, the capital of the Russian Caucasus, and alongit runs the railway with Baku on the Caspian at one endand Batum on the Black Sea at the other. South ofTiflis there is in the Caucasus plateau a deep rift fromnorth-east to south-west, narrowing as it thrusts intothe highlands. Up this rift had been carried a branchof the railway, and on that line are first Alexandropol,next the famous rock fortress of Kars, and finally, closeto the Russo-Turkish frontie
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