Page:1902 Encyclopædia Britannica - Volume 26 - AUS-CHI.pdf/674

 CAUCASUS 618 arms to abandon their mountain villages, and rather than settle 1 out of the country and emigrated to Turkey, constituting now on the northern plains, as they were offered, preferred to be driven | the bashi-bazouks. As to the Russians, they have but a few small

towns along the coast, namely, Novorossiysk (16,208 inhabitants), Sukhum-kale (7809), and Sochi, the first named of which is connected by a branch railway with the great line of North Caucasia, and becomes a great corn-exporting seaport. Immense beds of coal have been discovered at Ochemchiri.

B. Middle Caucasus, from the sources of the Kuban to those the Ardon, i.e., from Mt. Elbruz to the Adai-khokh, is the highe portion of the range. Immense snow-clad ridges of mountains shoot off from the main range on its southern slope, at small anSles , its main axis, forming large longitudinal valleys (Legchum, K