Note 6 — Chapter XXI · GEOGRAPHICAL

We may, perhaps, regard this chain as the most southerly of the latitudinal ridges which begin on the north with the Akhaltsykh-Imeritian and Trialethian systems. It extends the area of the highlands for some distance towards the east, when, after commencing to incline in an east-south-easterly direction, it effects a junction with the Shah Dagh. This last-named ridge takes the frontier along the eastern shore of Lake Gökcheh to the confines of Karabagh; and the elevation may be traced through the spine of the northern Karabagh mountains across the Kur to the range which faces the Caspian Sea. But Karabagh may be regarded as a separate geographical unit, combining in miniature many of the characteristics of the Armenian highlands—an inner plateau region flanked by peripheral ranges. The immemorial home of Armenian inhabitants, the seat of Tartar immigrants and the happy hunting-ground of nomad Kurds, it constitutes a solid outer buttress to Armenia on the side of the Caspian.6 The true boundary must be taken southwards from the Ginal Dagh (over 11,000 feet) to the Kety Dagh, where it forms a loop towards the west; and, after almost encircling an upland sheet of water, called the Ala Göl, is protracted through the heights of Sir-er-syrchaly (11,298 feet) and Salvarty (10,422 feet) to the valley of the Araxes at Migry just east of Ordubad. The Karadagh mountains on the southern bank of the river continue the ridges of Karabagh; and the natural frontier is pushed westwards up the course of the Araxes as far as the village of Julfa. From this point you have the choice of two methods of demarcation, both of which repose on geographical facts. The line may be taken south-eastwards along the marginal ridge of the Karadagh to the water-parting between the basin of the Araxes on the one side and that of Lake Urmi on the other. This parting is of little orographical relief, but it would conduct the frontier almost in a straight line to the serried ridges of the southern peripheral zone on the south of Lake Van.7 Or the more pronounced bulwark between the Lake Van and Lower Araxes basins may seem to constitute the true boundary of the Armenian country. In this case an arbitrary line must be drawn from behind Bayazid, leading from the crest of these mountains, which at present constitute the Turko-Persian frontier to our original starting-point, Julfa. My reader will observe that we have left the barrier of the northern peripheral mountains, to explore the less certain limits on the side of Persia.