It is a country admirably adapted to grow cereals. The plains through which the Arpa Chai (grain river) eats its way to the Araxes constituted one of the granaries of Armenia in historical times.[13] At the present day they have not recovered from the devastations of the Mussulman peoples, and the Russians are jealous of allowing the Armenians a free hand. Extraordinary fertility is induced by the intermixture of the lavas with alluvial or lacustrine deposits. The black earth of the plains about Akhalkalaki is famous[14]; and the soil in the neighbourhood of Alexandropol derives its richness from the incidence of a peculiar kind of lava side by side with the sediment of a former lake. The southerly extension of these vanished waters is marked by the belt of high ground extending from Alagöz across the plains to the Arpa Chai. The river has forced its way through this elevation between Ani and Magaspert.[15]
Other effects of the violent disturbance to which the region has been subjected are manifest on a large scale. Thus all the way from the Soghanlu Dagh on the south to the neighbourhood of the mountains of the Ajars on the north the ground has fallen away to the labyrinth of valleys which feed the Chorokh by what geologists would call an extensive fault. The edge of the plateau region stands up boldly upon that side from the levels adjacent on the west. A still more recent earth movement may be represented by the uptilt towards the north-east of a considerable block of country lying between Kars and the junction of the Arpa with the Araxes. This phenomenon, which recalls a similar occurrence in the Trialethian district, has occasioned the curious course of the stream of Kars, which, rising in close vicinity to the flood of the same river to which ultimately it becomes tributary, pursues a course almost at right angles to that of the Araxes for a distance of thirty miles. To the same cause is in part due the extraordinary elevation of the levels along the left bank of the Araxes between Armutli and the confluence of the Arpa Chai.
Besides the last-named stream this lofty stage of the Armenian tableland gives birth to one of the great rivers of western Asia. The Kur rises from the highlands on the south of Ardahan, between the wall of mountain which overlooks Lake Chaldir on the west and the rim of the plateau region. In Turkish times this district constituted a separate fief, and was governed by a hereditary prince of Georgian origin who resided at Urut. The name of the district, Göleh, still figures on the Russian maps. It is subject to a rigorous climate, the snow lying during eight months in some years. Only the hardiest of the cereals come to maturity; yet the olive and the pomegranate flourish in the valley of Artvin, but thirty miles distant, and even at this altitude and during winter the rays of a southern sun temper the cold. One of the principal arms of the river comes from the south-west, and is named the river of Ardahan; it is joined by four considerable tributaries, of which the most easterly is said by Koch to have been known to the inhabitants under the name of Kyürr.[16] Even at the present day the Kur is called the river of Ardahan until its entry into the passage of Borjom. The basin from within which these various branches gather has a length which may be computed at eight hours’ journey on horseback and a breadth equivalent to about six hours. It abounds in springs, and marshes cover its floor. Below Ardahan, where it skirts the base of the Dochus Punar system, the Kur threads a narrow valley, deeply buried in the volcanic soil. So it flows past the grottoes of Vardzia and the Devil’s City at Zeda Tmogvi, augmented by small affluents of which the largest is the Karri Chai. At Khertvis it is joined by the Toporovan river, bringing the drainage of the districts on the east, and swirling into the channel with foam-shot waves. The united volume dwells for a short space in wider landscapes, until it pierces the extreme base of the Sanislo branch of the Trialethian mountains, and is again confined in a narrow valley. Thence it issues upon the plains about Akhaltsykh, receives assembled tributaries from the northern border range, and disappears into the gorge of Borjom.
II. A traveller coming from Alexandropol down the stream of the Arpa or along the valley of the Abaran, further east, can scarcely fail to become sensible of an appreciable change in climate and scenery by the time he shall have rounded the colossal pile of Alagöz. It is not, indeed, a new country or a new clime. The shapes which rise on the skyline are due to the same volcanic agency which has imprinted its character upon the northern landscapes. The shelving away of the ground to the basin-like depression which receives the Araxes recalls similar surface features in the northern districts. The rays of the sun fall from a heaven which remains blue. Clouds are still floating upon the azure, or are suspended upon the higher outlines. What has changed is the scale and intensity of the phenomena. The hills have given place to great mountains, the down-like expanses to one vast area of sloping ground. Into those dreamy spaces sweep the forms of the landscape, circled round them for a visible distance of some sixty miles.
The valley of the Araxes from the neighbourhood of Sardarabad to that of Julfa—a space of over a hundred miles—composes nearly one-half of the more southerly sphere of north-eastern Armenia. We are already so familiar with its overpowering individuality that it would be turning finished ground to describe it anew. For many a mile it is only confined at an immense interval by the fabric of Ararat and the pile of Alagöz. But, even when the river—a ribbon in the expanse—has already distanced the Little Ararat, the folds of the landscape are ample into which it descends. Volcanoes on such a huge scale as these two Armenian giants could scarcely be expected to rise save on the margins of a great depression, whether subsidence may have been the cause or the effect. To the 7000 feet of the plateau region on the north this basin-like plain opposes a maximum elevation of 3000 feet and a minimum of something over 2000 feet.
The vine flourishes and is cultivated in these plains of the Araxes, and fields of castor-oil plant grace the ground. Such oases with thriving villages soften the lap of the landscape, and diversify the wide stretches of rich but idle soil which the network of trenches with their fertilising waters have not yet reached. Irrigation rather than rainfall is here the productive agency; and, indeed, this valley, with a yearly rainfall of only about six inches, is probably the driest throughout Russian Transcaucasia. The storms of the Pontic region spend themselves before reaching this haven; but they beat against the volcanoes of the meridional water-parting on the easterly margin of the more northerly sphere. Even at Alexandropol the yearly rainfall is almost three times as great as in the neighbourhood of Ararat. And while the climate of the city on the Arpa may compare with St. Lawrence in North America, that of Erivan resembles Palermo or Barcelona.[17]
On the north of this most extensive depression of the surface of Armenia lies the plateau region supporting Lake Gökcheh. The axis or greatest length of that expanse of sweet water lies about parallel to the course of the Araxes, to which it sends a tributary varying in volume with the season of the year through a trench-like passage at its south-westerly extremity.[18] On the north the lake is confined by a long ridge of the peripheral mountains, and its lofty level (6340 feet) is held up by the volcanic plateau of Akhmangan, acting as a dam on the side of the low-lying plains. The Akhmangan region consists of a gently vaulted platform, interrupted by a series of volcanic eminences extending over a distance of nearly thirty miles. Several of their cone-shaped summits attain a height of nearly 11,000 feet, and one, the Akh Dagh, of close upon 12,000 feet above sea-level. An absence of springs, due to the nature of the volcanic rock, is characteristic not only of this region but also of that part of the neighbouring Karabagh country which lies within the embrace of the two mountainous zones.[19] In this respect it contrasts to the well-watered and wooded retreats of the district of Darachichak to the west of the lake. The wealthier citizens of Erivan take refuge in those pleasant upland valleys when the plain of the Araxes has become a furnace under the rays of a midsummer sun.
The area of the country comprised within the two spheres of which I have been speaking is about 20,587 square miles. With the exception of a narrow strip on the right bank of the Araxes, measuring 1518 square miles, the entire territory—more than commensurate with that of Servia—lies within the dominions of the Tsar.
[1] Suess makes the outer Iranian arc commence at Tank, near Dereh Ismail Khan on the Indus (Das Antlitz der Erde, Leipzic, 1885, vol. ii. p. 552). [↑]