- Project Runeberg -  Armenia and the Near East /
160

(1928) [MARC] Author: Fridtjof Nansen - Tema: Russia
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ARMENIA AND THE NEAR EAST
160
Here one could see how the ordinary country-folk lived.
Four stone walls and a mud floor ; not a scrap of furniture
that I could see, except an iron pot to cook their food in.
The usual fuel is dried cow-dung, whenever it is procurable.
One can hardly imagine plainer living. In front of a hut
which stood by itself on the plain was a woman dressed in
a dazzling white dress, perhaps some finery that she had put
on in honour of the strangers ; but how on earth anything
could be kept white in that low, dingy room is more than I
can conceive.
Meanwhile dark clouds had gathered in the north. They
became more and more lowering, black and threatening,
though the sky in the west and north-west was lit up by the
sunset. Suddenly there was a blinding flash of lightning,
followed by a peal of thunder ; then flash after flash across
the black sky, while the thunder rolled nearer and nearer.
There appeared to be a violent downpour over the mountains
to the north. In the end the ram reached us, too, but it did
not come to much—it seemed to evaporate on the way. Soon
it stopped altogether, and the sky cleared again.
A strange climate this, so cloudy and yet so dry ! Either
the clouds gather round the summit of Mount Alagoz and
spread southwards, or else they gather round the summit of
Mount Ararat in the south-east and are blown up here across
the plain. The sky may look extremely threatening, but the
yearning soil seldom gets any ram.
The darkness fell rapidly over the mountains and the
surrounding country. In the middle of the night the tram
arrived, our carriage was coupled up, and wc journeyed on to
Leninakan or Gumri.
The New Canal near Leninakan.
Sunday, June 2 ist, had arrived at last—the great day of
the opening of the new Shiraksky Canal, whereby about
20,000 acres of new, dry land was to be irrigated and rendered
fertile.
When wc looked out of the windows of our carriage next
morning the station was full of soldiers who had come for the

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