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

162 THE EXPLORERS OF ARARAT
generally whitish hue, formed, as has been said, of volcanic sand and ashes, the steep slopes rise in a belt of green
5000 feet wide; above this is another zone of black volcanic rock, streaked with snow beds; highest of all the cap of
dazzling silver. At one glance the eye takes in all these zones of climate and vegetation from the sweltering plain to the
icy pinnacle, ranging through more than 14,000 feet of vertical height. There can be but few other places in the world
where so lofty a peak (17,000 feet) soars so suddenly from a plain so low, 2000 to 3000 feet above the sea, and
consequently few views equally grand. The great summits of the Himalaya, like those of the Alps and the Atlas, rise
from behind high spurs and outliers, at some distance from the level country; while the giants of the South American
Cordilleras and of Mexico, all of them, like Ararat, volcanic, rise out of high plateau, and therefore lose to the eye a
good deal of their real height. Orizaba, for instance, though 17,000 feet high, stands on a base of 7000 feet in height;
Chimborazo reaches 21,000 feet, but the plateau of Riobamba beneath it is nearly 10,000 feet above sea-level. The
Peak of Teneriffe springs up out of the sea, but its height, 12,000 feet odd, falls considerably short of that of Ararat,
and this seems to be true, also, of the lofty volcanoes along the coast of Northern Japan. Any one who is familiar with
the Alps, which I take as best known to us, must have been surprised to notice how seldom he saw, near at hand, any
single unbroken mountain slope of great vertical elevation. A few points one remembers, such as Courmayeur, where
nearly 12,000 feet of Mont Blanc are seen; or Val Anzasca, where, from a valley about 4000 feet above the sea, Mone
Rosa ascends, in what the eye thinks a precipice, to 15,000; or Randa, below Zermatt, where the peak of the
Weisshorn, 11,000 feet above the spectator, seems to hang over head. These instances, however are instances of a
view from a valley, where other hardly inferior heights lie round; here in Armenia the mountain raises himself, solitary
and solemn, out of a wide, sea-like plain.
The only exception, so far as I know, to the admiration which it has excited in the minds of the modern travelers
who have seen it is supplied by the famous French botanist Tournefort (in the beginning of the eighteenth century),
who says, “This mountain, which lies between the south and south-southeast of the Three Churches (the Tatar name
for Etchmiadzin) is one of the most dismal and disagreeable sights on the face of the earth.” One wonders whether a
time will again come when men of taste will think so differently from ourselves.
Ararat has, at present, another claim to importance, in which, so far as I know, it is singular among famous
mountains. It is the meeting-point, the cornerstone, of three great empires. On the top of its lower peak, Little Ararat,
the dominions of the Czar, the Sultan, and the Shah, the territories of the three chief forms of faith that possess
Western and Northern Asian, converge to a point. From this point the frontier between Persia and Turkey trends off to
the south-southwest, while that of Turkey and Russia, running along the ridge that joins Little to Great Ararat, mounts
the latter, keeps along its top in a north west direction, and then turns west, along the watershed of volcanic
mountains, Pambak and Synak, which divides the Russian province of Erivan, including the middle valley of the Aras,
from the Turkish pashalik of Bayazid. This is no accident, nor has Ararat been taken as a boundary merely because it
was a convenient natural division; it is rather a tribute to the political significance of the name and associations of the
Mountain of the Ark. When in 1828 the Czar Nicholas I, having defeated the Persians, annexed the territory round
Erivan, his advisers insisted on bringing Ararat within the Russian border, on account of the veneration wherewith it is
regarded by all the surrounding races, and which is reflected on the sovereign who possesses it. To the Armenians it is
the ancient sanctuary of their faith, the center of their once famous kingdom, hallowed by thousand traditions. He who
holds Ararat is therefore, in a sense, the suzerain of the most vigorous and progressive Christian people of the East.
To the Mohammedans, Persians, Turks, Tatars, and Kurds, the mountain, though less sacred, is still an object of awe
and wonder from its size, its aspect, and the general acceptance among them of the tale of the Flood. In these
countries one still sees traces of that tendency, so conspicuous in the ancient world, but almost obliterated in modern
Europe, for men of one race and faith to be impressed by the traditions and superstitions of another faith, which they
may even profess to disbelieve and hate. No Irish Protestant venerates the sacred island in Lough Derg; but here the
fanatical Tatars respect, and the Persian rulers formerly honored and protected, Etchmiadzin and many another
Christian shrine; while Christians not infrequently, both in the Caucasus and farther south through the eastern regions
of Turkey, practice pagan or Mohammedan rites which they have learnt from their neighbors, and even betray their
awe for the sacred places of Islam.
A remarkable result of this superstitious reverence for Ararat is to be found in the scarcely shaken persuasion of
its inaccessibility. A Persian Shah is said to have offered a large reward to any one who should get up; but nobody
claimed it. There is also a story told of a Turkish pasha at Bayazid who was fired with an ambition to make the ascent,
and actually started with a retinue for the purpose. He meant however to do it on horseback, and in fact went no farther
than his horse would carry him, which was of course a long way below the snow-line. The first recorded ascent was
made, in A.D. 1829, by Dr. Frederick Parrot, a Russo-German professor in the university of Dorpat, whose name is
attached to one of the pinnacles of Monte Rosa. He was beaten back twice, but on the third attempt reached the top
with a party of three Armenians and two Russian soldiers. The description he gives is perfectly clear and intelligible;
and its accuracy has been in most respect confirmed by subsequent observers. There is not, and ought never to have
been, any more doubt about his ascent than about De Saussure’s residence on the Col du Géant; and the enterprise,
considering how little was then known about mountain climbing, the most modern of all our arts or sciences, and how
much superstitious prejudice he had to overcome in order to persuade the natives to aid or accompany him, was not
unworthy to be compared with that of the great Genevese. Nevertheless, in spite of the evidence he produced, that of
two Russian soldiers who had gone with him, in spite of his own scientific attainments, and the upright and amiable