CHAPTER XXIII.
FOR fifty miles after leaving Baku the railway follows the coast of the Caspian Sea until it reaches Alayat, where the Government is establishing a port that promises to be of considerable importance at no distant day. The country is a desert dotted with salt lakes, and here and there a black patch indicating a petroleum spring. The only vegetation is the camel-thorn bush, and much of the ground is so sterile that not even this hardy plant can grow. Very little rain falls here, and sometimes there is not a drop of it for several months together.
At Alayat the railway turns inland, traversing a desert region where there are abundant indications of petroleum; in fact all the way from Baku to Alayat petroleum could be had for the boring, and at the latter place several wells have been successfully opened, though the low price of the oil stands in the way of their profitable development. After leaving the desert, a region of considerable fertility is reached. The streams flowing down from the mountains are utilized for purposes of irrigation, but very rudely; under a careful system of cultivation the valley of the Kura River, which the railway follows to Tiflis, could support a large population.
From Baku to Tiflis by railway is a distance of three hundred and forty-one miles, and the line is said to have cost, including rolling stock, about fifty thousand dollars a mile. In the work on the desert portion many of the laborers died from the effects of the extreme dryness of the atmosphere. The whole distance from Baku to Batoum, on the Black Sea, is five hundred and sixty-one miles.
