A RUSSIAN WINTER.

Ashburton Guardian, Volume III, Issue 642, 22 May 1882, Page 3

A RUSSIAN WINTER.

Whilst (says the Golos) we enjoy such 3 wonderfully warm winter, some_parts of Russia are visited by terriffic cold weather. The Trans-Caucasia, which is generally warm, has been exceptionally cold this winter ; the oldest inhabitants do not remember having witnessed such a persistant frost. The gigantic chain of the Caucasus, is covered with snow to its very foot. The immense and flat valley of the Kur and Arax rivers present only an illimitable snowy plain. Rivers which had never been seen frozen over, and rivulets which not been so for twenty years, are now covered with a thick layer of ice. The inhabitants of thaj district, unaccustomed to cold, are obliged to stay m their wretchedly-built smoky little huts, packed up together round their ioundihn (holes dug in the ground of the hut to bake the bread)j where some few pieces of charcoal are burning. Tfie workmen and laborers, whose

. houses have no doors, are submitted to ' the most terrible privations. In the valleys the snow is several yards deep. In. the forestless plains, where the wood is always very dear, it can only be had how at exorbitant prices, and the poor > are almost condemned to be frozen to death. The cattle, which arfe generally fed on the pasturage at the bottom of the mountains, are also condemned tQ a sure death from starvation, as it is obt the habit of the country to make provisions of hay; the flocks of sheep will doubtless share the same iate. The coming spring promises to be , territye for the Caucasian mountaineers. 1