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National Geographic : 1919 Nov
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THE NATIONAL GEOGRAPHIC MAGAZINE Photograph by Melville Chater SEEKING WHAT WARMTH THE SUN CAN GIVE Alexandropol, whose people are dying at a rate of 200 to 250 a day, is almost a mile above sea-level. Refugees are forced to sleep in the open, and their weakened bodies eventually give up the fight for life. Note the snow on the hillsides, indicative of the bitter nights, for the variation between the warmth of noonday and the marrow-chilling cold of the darkness is unusually great at such a high altitude. Erivan. From a free discussion of topics our relations had somehow changed to a rigid silence; and whenever we did speak, it only augmented a certain undercurrent of mutual irritation. TO IGDIR THROUGH 40 MILES OT DESOLATION A war-battered motor of American body, Russian tires, and second-hand parts from every country in the world jounced us to Igdir, across forty miles of flat country, throughout which mud-hut villages clustered and old trenches scored the plain, while Ararat loomed ever ahead, more dazzlingly white and sky filling, as morning turned to noontide. Cutting his right shoulder, a faint line betrayed the cleft through which the great hordes of refugees had filed in their flight from Turkish Armenia during the massacres of 1915. Three times in as many years have masses of these 300,000 people crossed and recrossed the mountains, advancing and retreating, as Russia threw the Turk ish armies back or withdrew before them. In 1916 the refugees were even repatri ated long enough to sow the soil, but not to reap the crops, which were abandoned to the enemy. Finally, at Bolshevism's outbreak, the disorganized Russian troops went home, leaving the Transcaucasus undefended. Of its main peoples, the Georgians welcomed the Germans, while the Tatars were coreligionists with the Turks; wherefore the latter's despolia tions were directed solely against the Ar menians. The country through which we were passing revealed neither sowed acres nor cattle, nor sheep at graze; for seed, agri cultural implements, and all else had been swept away by the enemy. Once the Arax River was passed, how ever, one could recognize the Tatar vil lages by the presence of field animals and husbandry. Still farther on, the popula- 414
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