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ARMENIA AND THE NEAR EAST
54
see in the short time before one o’clock, when the Govern
ment of Batum had invited us to lunch. My companions,
headed by our keen botanist, M. Carle, motored to the
botanical gardens a little way outside the town. These
gardens are noted for their beauty, with a wealth of sub
tropical plants and trees which thrive particularly well in this
warm, damp climate.
Meanwhile I called upon the representative of the local
Government. And there was one other thing I particularly
wanted to see in Batum ; the pipe-line which carries the
petroleum all the way overland from Baku to the Black Sea.
I was tåken in a motor-car to the terminus of this pipe-line.
On the way we passed the large tea factory and plantations
which were established here by the Tsar and are now managed
by the State. Besides these plantations there is a good deal
ofprivate tea-growing in this neighbourhood, tea being planted
on many hillsides where maize and corn will not grow. This
tea-growing seems to pay well. The tea is not particularly
good, I was told, being rather devoid of flavour, but it is
blended with Ceylon tea (10 per cent.) and seiis as well as the
latter. Among other things cultivated here are oranges,
tangerines, large quantities of tobacco, bamboos, maize,
millet, and a kind of rice which they told me does not have
to be grown under water and can therefore be cultivated
without interfering with the measures against malaria.
We caught sight of some large tanks rising above the
plain in front of us. By these we stopped. 1 went in to
call on the chief engineer in his office ; then threaded my way
among various buildings and tanks, across railway-lines, and
out into a fleld, with the engineer as my pilot.
At length I saw the pipe-line, that remarkable artery which,
since it was completed in 1906, has conveyed so much power
and light to Europe. It looked like an ordinary water-main
laid alongside a row of poplars, and stretching away across
the plain to the heights in the distance. The iron pipe has
an inner diameter of about 20 cm., and according to the
engineer the line was now conveying 10 million poods
(164,000 tons) of petroleum a year. He stated, however,
that it couid convey up to 30 million poods (492,000 tons)
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