Full resolution (JPEG) - On this page / på denna sida - V. To Erivan. The physical features of Armenia
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TO ERIVAN 111
spite of incessant wars against superior forces, against the
Moslem Arabs, Turks, Tatars, and Kurds on one side, and
Christian Byzantium on the other, they surrounded them
selves here with remarkable magnificence, building churches,
monasteries, palaces, and fortifications which still testify to
a remarkably high standard of culture, and form interesting
memorials of one stage in the history of architecture.
Wrecked and plundered by Seljuk-Turks, Mongolians, and
others, devastated by earthquakes, the place is now a dead
city of ruins in a barren wilderness. The old city wall with
nearly thirty towers is still partly intact. One can ride through
the city gate into the empty streets. Remains of the royal
palace, the remarkable cathedral, and other churches dating
from about a.d. iooo are still standing. The peculiarity of
this town is, that as nobody has lived there since, the walls
have not been pulled down for the stones to be used for other
buildings ; it has been left to the desert, and lies there as it
lay after its destruction more than five hundred years ago.
Its site is on a small mountain plateau between two ravines,
about a . hundred or two hundred feet in depth. These
ravines have been formed by two rivers which meet here, the
Arpa-chai on one side and the Alaja-chai on the other.
Formerly an Armenian monk Jived in the ruins ; also a single
Armenian peasant family. But no doubt they, too, departed
when the country became Turkish, and now the place is lett
wholly deserted and solitary in the brown desert.
They say the Lion and the Lizard keep
The Courts where Jamshyd gloried and drank deep
And Bahram, that great Hunter—the Wild Ass
Stamps o’er his Head, but cannot break his sleep.
How many ruins of past glories there are in these Eastern
lands ! Inferior races who could pillage and lay waste, but
could never rebuild, have had a free hand here to squander
the lives and works of men.
Farther south wc had a view of the wide Sardarabad plain,
or desert, which particularly interested us, because of the
proposal that it should be cultivated by the refugees and irri
gated with water brought from the Arpa-chai. From where wc
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