The Brookings register. [volume] (Brookings, Brookings County, S.D.) 1903-1971, 1923-02-01
AUTHOR WRITES FROM ASIA

ing letter to her grandmother, Mrs. G.
p. Ingalls, of De Smet which was pub
lished in the De Smet News last week.
We believe u readers will be inter
ested in reading it.
Dear Grandmother:
Mother writes that you were wor-
ried about my being in Constantinople
when the Near East situation blew up,
SO hasten to assure you myself that
| am not to be worried about. Little
things like wars and revolutions are
commonplace to me now, and anyway,
they are never as exciting when you
are in them as they are when you read
about them. | have been under fire
so many times in Europe that | miss
it when | don't hear rifie-tire or ma
chine guns for a long time. | was
really very sorry not to have been in
Constantinople when the excitement
started, for | would have gone at once
to Smyrna or Thrace, where most of
my lucky friends rushed to be. In
stead, | was marooned up here in the
SduNoodo, Will lhC Dldth oSd CIOStu,
and no way to get back except through
Persia and Mesopotamia, and that is
such a long and difficult way that |
knew everything would be ended be-
fore could get there. So | stayed
peacefully in Georgia taking sulphur
baths and looking at scenery, until |
came down into Armenia, which is
even more peaceful.
The sulphur baths were fun; they
are about twelve hundred years old,
or SO. Tifis, the capital of Georgia,
was named for them in the sixth cen
fury. They are natural sulphur
springs, Mechanically heated, and the
water is piped into large buildings
all blue mosaic outside and steam in
side. You go down some stairs into
underground rooms walled with tile
and vaulted like cathedrals and while
you sit in the steam an attendant
scrapes off most of your skin with a
bath-mitten, and then fills a soaped
cotton sack with her breath, and
sQueezes it over you, and 10, you the
simply buried in SOap bubbles. There
are showers both hot and cold, and
huge pools of the hot sulphur water,
in which you soak and play around.
You have all this to yourself, a private
room. All Tiflis goes to the sulphur
baths and there are AZ different ma
tionalities in Tihis, so you can imagine
what fun it is to watch them while
you wait your turn for a There
are Tartars and Georgians and Ar
menians and Russians and people from
Daghestan and Ajerbaijan and Adcasia
and all kinds of places whose very
names | never heard before.
Armenia is a beautiful country, and
in normal times it would be very rich
agriculturally. Lots Of beautiful val
legs between mountains. Just now
| am at Ervain, the capital, which is
Just under Ararat. where Noah's Ark
is supposed to have rested after the
flood. ] doubt it, myself, for goodness
knows he would have had a frightful
time herding all the animals down
about 5000 feet Of damp cliffs, | am
a guest Of the Near East Relief, which
has certainly pulled Armenia through
a hard time. Things are much better
now; practically all Of the refugees
have disappeared, absorbed into the
country, and things are rapidly getting
back to normal. The Near East Re
lief has $4,000 orphans in one station
,1,~o Iovo,,Irnnp II ic on aCtny1n6-
ing sight-they simply cover the
ground for miles. They live in the
old barracks of the Russian Czarist
army, which were badly broken up
during the wars, but which the Near
East repaired. They have schools,
hospitals. carpenter shops, blacksmith
shops, several thousand acres of land
which they cultivate, and acres of
d]ormitories and dining rooms; it is the
largest o~rphanage in the world. There
are several thousands more in other
stations, about six thousand here IN
Erivan. The whole country was in
such a wrecked condition when h
East Relief came that it prac-
tically had to build towns; it distrib-
uted food and clothes to the refugees
and have them work for it, and thus it
built roads and cleaned and paved
streets and repaired buildings and san
itary systems and it is now helping
the government build three irrigation
systems by the same method. 1t is a
very sensible way Of distributing re-
lief, | think, because it not only re-
lieves an immediate condition, but
leaves something of permanent value.
Armenia is getting along very we'll,
considering everything. The harvest
is about 60 per cen Of enough to feed
the population until another harvest,
because there was not e%noungh seed to
plant. The government distributed
all the seed there was. and the Near
East Relief distributed grits for the
people to eat so that they would not
have to eat the seed. That way, they
got through last year. This veal Rus
STA is sending 200, 900 pood "a pood is
about SO pounds) OF seed to help
through this year, and I think that by
next year there will be no need for