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THE NATIONAL GEOGRAPHIC MAGAZINE 



Photograph by Melville Chater 



A SINGLE DAYS RESCUE AT ERIVAN 



Every bit of relief-work goes to aid some other bit. The task that provides a starving woman 

 with honest bread provides a covering for these children. 



who sided with the Turks and against the 

 Armenians, and who were therefore left 

 in comparative plenty. They even have 

 seed grain, as you can tell by those dis- 

 tant patches of cultivation. The other 

 night I met a young Armenian girl, ac- 

 companied by her parents, trudging to 

 the river's edge. Presently the latter 

 came back with a sack of Tatar flour in- 

 stead of a daughter. The thing is not 

 uncommon and is done by mutual con- 

 sent. The girl is glad to eat her Tatar 

 lord's food ; the parents are glad to have 

 saved her and themselves from starva- 

 tion." . . . 



erivan, Armenia's capital 



Another day, and we had reached Eri- 

 van, the capital of Armenia's provisional 

 republic and an inconceivable contrast to 

 the Georgian government seat at Tiflis. 

 At Erivan one finds no spacious prospekt 

 nor viceregal palace, no smart shops, 

 Russian opera, nor gay night life. To 

 behold misery in Tiflis, one must search 

 it out. In Erivan one cannot escape it. 



This poor, straggling, dingy city of the 

 plains, whose government offices suggest 

 some hastily extemporized election head- 



quarters and whose parliament chamber 

 is rigged up with benches and cheese- 

 cloth in the auditorium of the second- 

 class theater, boasts of but one beauty, 

 and that — to speak in paradox — is forty 

 miles away; for, in whatever quarter of 

 Erivan you may be, lift your glance and 

 great Ararat of eternal snows is seen 

 brooding distantly over the mean streets 

 with his aspect of majestic calm. He is 

 the Armenian's Olympus, or rather say, 

 the Sinai of a race which has known 

 bondage and wilderness-wandering, and 

 for centuries a people's imagination has 

 turned toward him. 



The little Erivan republic which cen- 

 ters about Ararat contains within its 

 present limits less than 1,500 square 

 miles — only one-half of which area is 

 capable of high productivity — two hun- 

 dred miles of railroad, and about two 

 million people. It has been the center of 

 refuge for Turkish Armenians ever since 

 the massacre of 191 5, and between 200,- 

 000 and 300,000 of them are camped 

 within its borders. 



As for the city itself, its former popu- 

 lation of 40,000 has been doubled by this 

 influx. There starvation and typhus have 



