On the eastern side of Alaghez is a wonderful lake called Goktcha, occupying the crater of a volcano 6,337 feet above the sea. The lake is forty-three miles long and an average of twenty miles wide and receives the drainage of a very large area. The mountains that encircle it rise like a wall between 4,000 and 5,000 feet and most of them are entirely covered with timber. The water is very deep, clear, and cold, and abounds with fish, which furnish employment for many people. They ship their catch daily by train to Tiflis, which is a limited but a profitable market. The choicest fish is a salmon trout similar to that found in the streams and lakes of the Rocky Mountains.
In ancient times, if we are to believe the legends, the fish in Lake Goktcha were never seen between Christmas Day and Lent, but on Ash Wednesday used to come to the surface in large schools and permit themselves to be caught daily until Easter Sunday. This practice, as I understand, has become obsolete, and they behave like other fish in these degenerate days.
On an island in the lake is a picturesque Armenian monastery called after St. Sevan, alleged to have been founded by Tiridates, the most famous of all the kings of Armenia, only three hundred years after the crucifixion.
Below Alexandropol, a branch of the railway runs up to the city of Kars, another point of great strategic importance in-case Russia and Turkey should ever come to blows again, as they have so many times in the past, for it commands all northern Armenia. The Russians intend to annex the rest of Armenia to their dominions sooner or later, and then they will have Persia practically surrounded. This is the second time they have occupied Kars. They captured it during the Crimean war, but were compelled to give it up. In 1877 they took it again, and the following year it was definitely assigned to them by the Powers of Europe in the treaty of Berlin. The improvements since that time have been purely military, like everything else that Russia does down there. The old town remains just as it was in Turkish times, and the new town is like Alexandropol and other places I have described.
Not far south of Alexandropol, the railway passes through the extensive ruins of Ani, from the beginning of things down to the eleventh century the capital of the Armenians. In 1046 the king relinquished his authority in favour of the Byzantine emperor at Constantinople, and from that date up to 1877 that territory has been a part of Turkey. There are evidences of considerable splendour. The walls which surrounded the city are only partly destroyed, and a considerable section still remains forty and fifty feet high, with numerous round towers and battlements built of yellow stone and embellished with courses and crosses and other ornaments in black basalt. The gateways were imposing. The churches must have been large. The walls of several remain and portions of beautifully arched roofs. Here and there are decorations of rich carving, mosaic, and tiles, which, however, are rapidly peeling away and crumbling from neglect. Upon the edge of a ravine are the ruins of an extensive building with a monumental gateway which is supposed to have been the palace of the king, although there is no description of such a building in Armenian literature. The capital of Russian Armenia is thoroughly Russian in spots, but the greater part of it is thoroughly Oriental, and the bazaars, where most of the trade is conducted, are as interesting as any in the East. The name of the town is pronounced " Yer-ri-van, " with the accent on the last syllable, and the word means "at the foot," referring of course to Mount Ararat, the most famous of all mountains, perhaps, as well as one of the most interesting. The two peaks that compose the mountain, the greater 17,260 feet and the lesser 13,000 feet high, are always within view, barring the weather, and there is a decided difference of opinion as to the number of clear days in that climate.
People who want to "knock the town" insist that the peak of Great Ararat cannot be seen more than once a week, but the more loyal inhabitants will assure you that it is in plain sight every hour, morning, noon, and night, and every day in the year.