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158 ARMENIA AND THE NEAR EAST
there are no springs rising out of the ground. The water
for the railway-station has to be pumped up at great expense
through a pipe from the north. By the station wc saw a small
garden surrounded by a stone wall ; there were some trees
in it, which were given water from the pipe ; but otherwise
the country was utterly bare and barren.
On the way back from Arpa-chai wc passed the ruins of
some houses not far from the same place. One could not help
wondering how people could possibly have lived in such a
place without water, for there cannot ever have been artificial
irrigation in these parts. Could there at one time have been
a spring, which afterwards changed its course ? A more
probable supposition is that the houses belonged to herdsmen
who only stayed here at times of the year when there was more
ram, and consequently pasture for their animals.
Wc could not continue our journey by the tram to Lenin
akan before night, so wc spent the whole afternoon at the
station. The Government had a farm there with 500 cows
and 1,500 sheep. The sub-manager was a Russian from the
Don, with whom Captain Quisling could converse in the
Russian language. He stated that the intention was to increase
the stock to 5,000 cows and 15,000 sheep ; but the difficulty
was how to get enough water. The water pumped up
through the pipe to the station, which they were using at
present, was far too expensive.
They asked us whether it would not be possible to drill
artesian wells there ; and this might not be a bad idea. If
one could get down to a non-porous layer of some kind this
might very well contain water from the slopes of Alagoz ;
but the difficulty is that with these porous layers of lava and
tuff the water must sink to a very great depth before it is
stopped by watertight layers which will retain it. This
accounts, of course, for the numerous mineral springs in these
volcanic regions, where the water percolates far down,
dissolving mineral substances in the depths.
Looking at the brown plains and slopes around, one could
not but wonder how the cows could find any food there, let
alone give milk. Farther up in the mountains, however,
behind the heights that wc could see, and where the rainfall
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