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TO ARPA-CHAI AND LENINAKAN 161
function. As soon as wc had had breakfast wc motored
through the streets of Leninakan and out into the plains to
the north-west in order to see the tunnel for the canal before
the water was released. It was about 13 kilometres to the
dam at Arpa-chai, where the intake was. There was a
veritable migration of people along all the roads across the
plain, men, women, and boys of all ages, on foot and in all
kinds of overcrowded vehicles drawn by bullocks or horses,
decorated with streamers and flags of every colour of the
rainbow, with womenfolk in light, gaily coloured dresses,
and thousands of soldiers on foot and horseback—all in
merry mood and ready to enjoy the festivities.
Below on our left was the valley of Arpa-chai ; here one
could see the relics of a population that was no more, the ruins
of an entire town, with a monastery and a church with a round
dome-tower—all laid waste by war, with no attempt to rebuild
it. Leninakan itself was full of ruins, the result of the last
Turkish invasion ; but much of it had now been restored.
To-day, however, wc had to give our minds not to the past,
but to the present and the future.
The farther wc got the denser the migrating crowds became.
Once before I had seen a similar endless procession along the
roads ; it was in Thrace in 1922, when the Greeks and
Armenians fled from their hornes in terror of the Turks who
were to come. But on the present occasion there was no
terror, only gaiety and laughter.
Wc reached a village situated at the end of the tunnel.
Here there was a big triumphal arch, decorated in gorgeous
colours which bla2ed against the blue of the sky. It was
quite like the country-side in England on Derby Day, with all
the crowded carriages and picnickers, except that most of the
carriages were drawn by oxen.
A man jumped up on to the car while it was going, and
remained standing on the step. He had come to show us
the way. By the crossed hammers on his cap I saw that he
was a Russian engineer. I looked at him—felt sure that I
had seen him before. He smiled. Yes, wc had met twelve
years earlier and had travelled together in the wilds of Siberia
—in Amur—when he was an engineer on the Amur railway,
L
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