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THROUGH NORTH ARMENIA TO ERIVAN 179
When wc travelled across this plain it looked dry and
scorched. As a rule there was nothing but a few scattered
tufts of grass ; there were no trees at all, and not a patch of
rich verdure to be seen anywhere. The winter is very severe,
and therefore the small peasant houses, built of stone with
flat roofs, are half buried underground in the slopes as a
protection against the winter cold. The villages are insignifi
cant-looking and scarcely noticeable in the landscape, par
ticularly as there are no trees round them.
It was a fresh, brilliantly sunny morning. The air was full
of trilling larks ; and the country wc were driving through
was very beautiful, with the brown, slightly undulating plain
on all sides, and the blue mountain slopes rising in the distance
at its edges. On the east and north wc had the north-western
portion of the mountains which, on this side of the Sevan
Lake, form a ridge separating the Arax and Kura regions, and
dividing the green valleys and damp climate of the north
from the dry desert-like plains of the south. On the south
east and south wc had the mighty volcanic bulk of Mount
Alagoz ; while on the west the plain extended to the
distant heights near Kars, and to the Chaldir Mountains round
Lake Chaldir Gol in the north-west. But the landscape was
utterly bare, without a tree anywhere.
The country road was quite a good one, so wc could drive
at high speed. Wc soon left the plain and entered the
mountains, crossing the railway-line at 1,952 metres above
sea-level. Then wc travelled along a wide valley following
the railway in an eastward direction, keeping south of the
Chobukhly or Bezobdal Mountains. The river, which has a
very considerable fall, runs into the Kura.
When wc were a good 50 kilometres from Leninakan wc
turned off the main road and followed a by-road going north
across the Bezobdal ridge. An overwhelming spectacle met
our eyes when wc entered a narrow cul-de-sac valley with
the face of the mountain rising sheer in front of us, and saw
the road like an ever thinner thread winding with innumer
able turns up the precipitous mountain-side, higher and ever
higher until it vanished far above us on the edge of the cliff.
It is difficult to estimate distances and heights when the
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