1876 British Viscount & Ambassador James Bryce - Noah's Ark Search

136 THE EXPLORERS OF ARARAT
It should be noted that Dr. Parrot (1829 on the summit), German Dr. Herman Abich (1845 on Western Slope) and
Russian Colonel Khodzko (1850 on the summit) planted wooden crosses on the mountain earlier. Parrot's largest
piece of wood was five feet long and two inches wide. Khodzko's cross of seven feet could have fallen or been moved
down to lower elevations where Bryce found it.
James Bryce (1838-1922), a well-respected professor of law at Oxford, was born in Belfast, Ireland. James Bryce,
also a historian and statesman, was named Viscount and British Ambassador to the United States of America (1907-
1913). He became a leader of the Liberal party, held several government posts, and was a popular ambassador to the
United States. His treatise and study on the U.S. Constitution, The American Commonwealth (1888), remains a classic
and is still used.
At Trinity College, Oxford (B.A., 1862; doctor of civil law, 1870), Bryce wrote a prize essay that was published in
book form as The Holy Roman Empire (1864). In 1867 he was called to the bar, and from 1870 to 1893 he served as
regius professor of civil law at Oxford, where, with Lord Acton, he founded the English Historical Review (1885). From
1880 to 1907 he was a Liberal member of the House of Commons, serving as undersecretary of state for foreign
affairs (1886), chancellor of the duchy of Lancaster (1892), and president of the Board of Trade (1894-95). During
those two years he also presided over what came to be called the Bryce Commission, which recommended the
establishment of a ministry for education. At about this time he began to attack the expansionist British policy that led
to the South African War (1899-1902). Thus, when Sir Henry Campbell-Bannerman, who had also opposed the war,
became prime minister in December 1905, he appointed Bryce chief secretary for Ireland.
Bryce, who had made the first of his several visits to the U.S. in 1870, was sent as ambassador to Washington,
D.C., in February 1907. He already had made many friends in American political, educational, and literary circles and
had become widely popular in the United States for The American Commonwealth, 3 vol. (1888), in which he
expressed admiration for the American people and their government. As ambassador he dealt principally with U.S.-
Canadian relations, which he greatly improved, in part by personal consultation with the Canadian governor general
and ministers. In the process he also bettered relations between Great Britain and Canada, securing Canadian
acceptance of an arbitration convention (April 4, 1908) originally signed by Great Britain and the United States. He
retired as ambassador in April 1913.
On Jan. 1, 1914, Bryce was created a viscount. In the same year he became a member of the International Court
of Justice, The Hague. Later, during World War I, he headed a committee that judged Germany guilty of atrocities in
Belgium and France. Subsequently, he advocated the establishment of the League of Nations.
In 1876, James Bryce went on a steamboat from St. Petersburg 900 miles down the Volga River system to
Saratof where he took a Russian train 1100 miles to the foot of the Caucasus Mountains, 126 miles via wagon toward
Tiflis, and then on to Erivan, Aralykh, and up the southeast side of Ararat to summit it alone as all his companions fell
by the wayside to exhaustion. While Dr. Friedrich Parrot was a Russian who spoke and taught also in German, James
Bryce was an Englishman who began his journey from Russia. After his expedition, James Bryce authored the classic
work, Transcaucasia and Ararat, and has a descriptive form a writing that only educated ninenteenth century authors
can attain. If the reader does not enjoy history or would rather skip the wonderful reading on the voyage getting to
Mount Ararat from St. Petersburg, then the reader may want to skip a few pages and go directly to Chapter V or VI
below.
Introduction
The following pages contain a record of impressions received during a journey in the autumn of 1876 through
Russia, the Caucasian countries, and the [Ottoman] Turkish Empire. They are first impressions only, for which no
value can be claimed except that which belongs to impressions formed on the spot, and (as the author trusts) without a
prejudice in favor of either of the states which are now contending in the regions here described. Yet even first
impressions, if honestly formed, may sometimes atone for their crudity by their freshness. What most readers desire to
know about a country is how it strikes a newcomer. A book that tries to give this, to present the general effect, so to
speak, of the landscape, may have its function, even though it cannot satisfy the scientific student of geography or
politics.
The Author, however, did not travel with the intention of writing a book, nor would he, sensible as he is of his
imperfect knowledge, have now thought of sending these notes to the press but for two reasons. One is the
unexpected importance, which the outbreak of war in the countries he visited has given to them. The other is the
urgency of his friends, whose curiosity regarding Mount Ararat has made him think it worth while to print a narrative of
what he saw, and who assure him that some account of a mountain which every one has heard of, but about which
comparatively little has been written, would be more interesting to English and American readers than he had at first
supposed.