Batoum'

Batoum', or BATUM', a town of Russian Transcaucasia, on the eastern shore of the Black Sea, 201 miles W. of Tiflis, and 575 of Baku, by a railway completed in 1883. The Berlin Congress of 1878, in sanctioning the cession of Batoum by Turkey to Russia, stipulated that it should not be made into a naval station, but should remain an essentially commercial port. None the less the Russians have rendered it a second Sebastopol, and in 1886 withdrew its privileges as a free port. The harbour is one of the best on the east coast of the Black Sea. The place has been vastly improved since it changed hands, as to shops, hotels, schools, churches, and even its single mosque, but is still mean in appearance and insularity in its conditions. The marshy country around it has been drained. Population (1885) 10,500; (1897) 26,417. Batoum was founded as Petra by one of Justinian's generals early in the 6th century A.D., and figures as Vati in the middle ages. Ruins of churches and other buildings are found in the neighbourhood.