640 
RUINS OF ARMAVRA 
the level country wild, and very slenderly cheered with tracts in 
cultivation. But the bright beams of a noonday sun, chased 
away every immediate apprehension of the probable night- 
troopers of that abandoned ground; and at one o’clock we 
reached the northern shore of the Aras. Which noble stream, 
from the point of Abbas-abad, in the district of Nakshivan, 
where I first particularly observed it, had then appeared to me 
to keep on in a widely-sweeping course through a continued 
immense winding plain, banked to the south-east by the sloping 
sides of the hills forming the countless valleys of that long chain 
of Ararat. But as we approach the point of Armavra, the coun¬ 
try entirely changes its character; the plain disappears behind 
us, and the broken ground and acclivities appearing before and 
on each side, gradually close round us, till we find ourselves in 
a pent valley, and the river confined by perpendicular rocks. 
At this season of the year the water is low, but does not lose 
its rapidity. We forded it about a mile from Kara-kala, at a 
breadth of not more than forty yards, and so shallow that it 
scarcely washed the chests of our horses. On gaining the 
southern bank, we followed its course a short way, bringing us 
to the mouth of an immense ravine, equal in spaciousness to 
the great bed of the Araxes ; and on the angle which it formed 
with that river, we beheld the ruins of Armavra. 
Here was another of the vast solitudes of Armenia, where 
thousands of happy families had assembled round their domestic 
hearths, in opulence and comfort: and now all these thousands 
of habitations lay like others I had seen in similar depopulated 
silence, bearing awful characters on their walls against the mis¬ 
taken principle of ambition, which calls such desolation greatness. 
Considerable remains of embattled defences rise on all sides of 
