- Project Runeberg -  Armenia and the Near East /
139

(1928) [MARC] Author: Fridtjof Nansen - Tema: Russia
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Full resolution (JPEG) - On this page / på denna sida - VI. Across the Arax plain and in Erivan

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ACROSS THE ARAK PLAIN AND IN ERIVAN 139
been an intermixture of Russian blood. It seems certain that
as far back as the eighth and seventh centuries B.c.,Cimmerii,
Scythians, and other Indo-European peoples invaded these
regions from the north, and among them there may have been
fair Teutons as well. Moreover, the Armenians who entered
the country after that time were originally an Indo-European
tribe which came from Europe and may have been mixed with
fair people. In addition, there are the fair Kurds. So it is
quite possible that fair elements existed among the races that
went to compose the later Armenian people.
From the station wc motored in a south-westerly direction
into the Sardarabad desert, where there is at present no irriga
tion. It is a true wilderness, an endless scorched, dry, brown
plain, with nothing but here and there a few thistle-like tufts
of camel-thorn, a rough plant with sharp spikes that you
approach at your peril—you cannot touch them with the
bare hand without suffering in a way that will discourage you
from repeating the experiment.
The road led once more to the Arax, with another big iron
bridge over to Turkey, constructed, I need hardly say, by the
Russians, to whom the country on either side then belonged.
At the bridge-head there was a Red soldier on guard at each
side of the road, who forbade us to come too near. On a low
eminence just north of the bridge was a dilapidated house in
which a small military guard was quartered.
Near the river, and parallel with it, runs a canal crossed
by a smaller bridge just before reaching the large bridge.
This is the Little Sardarabad Canal, which comes from the
Arax at a point higher up, and brings water to the lower part
of the Sardarabad plain.
On the opposite side of the river wc could see some ruins
on the barren desert plain. These were the remains of Kara
kala, an old fort whose walls were largely made of stones
tåken from older ruins, no doubt those of one of the earliest
towns on the Arax. Everywhere in these parts you can trace
layer upon layer of human enterprise and civilization.
Over the bridge the road continues westward to Kulp,
where there are large salt-mines, from which the Armenians
used to get their salt in earlier days when the country on that

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