Gorchakov hoped to utilize the complications in such a way as to recover, without war, the portion of Bessarabia ceded by the treaty of Paris, but he soon lost control of events, and the Slavophil agitation produced the Russo-Turkish campaign of 1877-7 8.
He had the satisfaction of seeing the lost portion of Bessarabia restored to his country by the Berlin treaty, but at the cost of greater sacrifices than he anticipated.
It is only in the S.W., where spurs of the Carpathians enter the governments of Volhynia, Podolia and Bessarabia, that ridges reaching 1 100 ft.
Finally, in the S.E., towards the Caspian, on the slopes of the southern Urals and the plateau of Obshchiy Syrt, as also in the interior of the Crimea, and in several parts of Bessarabia, there are large tracts of real desert, buried under coarse sand and devoid of vegetation.
They first entered Poland from Germany during the era of the crusades, and soon spread through Lithuania, Courland, the Ukraine, and, in the 18th century, Bessarabia.