Armenia and its sorrows

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DESCRIPTION OF THE COUNTRY
ii
indicated, not only by the geolo^jjical formations,
but by tlie presence of numerous hot sulphur and
mineral springs, as also by the occurrence of disastrous
earthquakes. In 1840 the village of Aicuri was
entirely destroyed and about a thousand people
buried alive, while in Erevan and Nakhjevan hundreds
of houses were overthrown. Three years later,
Erzcroum was visited with a similar calamity, and as
lately as 1891, volcanic disturbances were reported
in the district of Van.
Six great rivers have their sources in the highlands
of Armenia,—the Euphrates, the Tigris, the Araxes,
the Cyrus, the Acampsis, and the Halys,—and flow into
three separate seas, fertilising the valleys as they go.
The Tigris has been identified with the Biblical
Hiddekel, and the Acampsis is supposed to be the
Pison, while many students of antiquity consider the
Araxes to be the ancient Gihon.
The national tradition that the human race had its
origin in Armenia we cannot here discuss. It may,
however, be not unreasonably asked, whether the
country still possesses any traces of that abounding
fertility and primal beauty with which tradition
clothes it. An eloquent Armenian writer thus answers
:
the inquiry
" Her natural beauty, salubrious climate, her exuberant
fertility, the fragrance of her flowers, the
variety of her singing birds, above all, her mountainous
bosom and overflowing breasts from which the
mighty waters run down on her sides and fill the
gr^-at channels of those rivers, which fertilise the
subjacent countries and replenish the three adj.icent
seas ; all these do justify her claim. ... If variety
makes beauty, Armenia furnishes such a variety,
making her one of the most beautiful countries
in the world ; not only has she those gigantic
mountains with their snow-crowned heads looking