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THROUGH NORTH ARMENIA TO ERIVAN 191
place, wc learned, was Zakhkadzor, a summer resort for the
people of Erivan.
Wc stopped a few minutes in a little village, where the
mayor of Delidjan took leave of us ; he was going to wait
there for his own car, which was coming to fetch him home.
It seemed to be a thriving hamlet, thronged with peasants who
had come in with their bullock-carts from the country round.
Somewhat farther along the road wc met two motor-buses
which run three times a week from Erivan to Delidjan.
As it proceeds on its course the river Zanga receives the
waters of several tributaries, the Grubel-chai, Songh-Bulagh,
and Alapars-chai ; it increases in volume and turns southward,
while at the same time its valley becomes larger and deeper.
Our own way went higher up, along the mountain-side.
The country began to look brown and parched, and the green
patches were now few and far between.
By and by wc were heading for Erivan, and the scenery
again underwent a complete change. Away in front of us
the country opened out ; in the south-west the undulating
brown mountain plain sloped down to the flat lands in the
broad Arax Valley, and in the west wc could see the southern
slopes of Mount Alagoz behind the heights on the far side
of the Zanga Valley. The farther wc went the browner and
drier the country became.
Gradually the prospect opened out. Alagoz appeared
more clearly, its massive shape towering above the mountain
slopes in the west. And in the south-west, as far as the eye
could reach, stretched the wide plain north of Echmiadzin,
with the Sardarabad plain looking like a brown sea away to
the west, and far beyond all, in the south, the blue mountain
chain which extends westward from Mount Ararat, nearly
a hundred kilometres distant.
Farther down wc passed a deserted military station, with
large empty houses. But the surrounding land was more
fertile ; there were trees and gardens, evidently the result of
irrigation, for a little river came down from the mountains
on the east.
But before long most of the country was arid and brown
again, though unquestionably it could all be brought under
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