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ARMENIA AND THE NEAR EAST
118
hotel was the park, with its fine old trees and the tea-pavilion
under them. Singing and the music of stringed instruments
came up to me, and now and then, at a pause in the singing,
the sound of many people clapping. I could see lights
glimmering among the trees. There was also music in a
cafe next door to the hotel. Most of the tunes seemed to be
some sort of monotonous dance, but in a minor key.
On the square to the right in front of the hotel I could just
make out in the dark a number of strange, ghostly shapes.
On closer inspection they proved to be a whole caravan of
camels standing quite motionless and silent in the street ;
apparently they would stand like that for hours on end, with
uplifted, inquiring heads, a picture of the imperturbable
resignation of the East.
Armenia and the Arax Plain.
Armenia is a concept which has varied widely in the course
of the ages. In the remote past it was a powerful kingdom
which embraced fertile lands stretching from the Urmia and
Van Lakes, the Taurus Mountains, and the sources of the
Tigris in the south-east and south, to the Sevan Lake and
Georgia in the north, and Erzingian and the Western Euphrates
in the west. Afterwards it was torn asunder, divided and
cut up, until it has finally dwindled into the little republic of
Armenia, only about 30,000 square kilometres in area, and
with a population of nearly one million, which, however, is
rapidly increasing.
Nevertheless this little country is full of striking contrasts :
wooded, fertile valleys ; scorched, arid wastes ; high volcanoes ;
rugged mountain districts ; and wide, level plains. Its present
boundaries are the Arax river on the south, the Arpa-chai
along part of the border on the west, the Georgian frontier
behind the range of mountains on the north, and the Azer
baijan frontier on the north-east and east, following a line
which curves from the far side of the Sevan Lake towards
the Arax in the south-east. Along the latter river, in the
south-eastern part of the country, is the autonomous Tatar
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