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

168 THE EXPLORERS OF ARARAT
reached by 6 PM, after which there would be no light fit for walking, and a night without food or wrappings in the open
air, even at 12,000 feet, might have had permanently disagreeable results.
This repulsive stone slope abuts at its upper extremity upon a line of magnificent black cliff, from which there were
hanging several glittering icicles, 200 feet long, frozen waterfalls in fact, produced by the melting of the snow on the
snow slope behind. Before reaching this, I had grown so weary of the loose stones, up which it was difficult to advance
except by a succession of spurts with the aid of hands and ice-axe, as to turn still farther to the left, and get on to
another rock-rib, composed of toppling crags of lava, along whose farther or western side, the arête itself being too
much broken, it was possible to work one’s laborious way over the fallen masses. Here a grand sight, perhaps the
grandest on the whole mountain, presented itself. At my foot was a deep, narrow, impassable gully, a sort of gigantic
couloir, in whose bottom snow lay where the inclination was not too steep. Beyond it a line of rocky towers, red, grim,
and terrible, ran right up towards the summit, its upper end lost in the clouds, through which, as at intervals they broke
or shifted, one could descry, far, far above, a wilderness of snow. Had a Kurd ever wandered so far, he might have
taken this for the palace of the Jinn.
This gully is, no doubt, one of those ancient volcanic fissures with which the mountain is seamed, and from which
great part of its lava has been discharged. The same phenomenon appears in most volcanic regions; in Iceland, for
instance, tremendous eruptions have taken place from similar rifts or gjás, as they are called there, opening on the
sides or even at the base of a mountain. This particular fissure, which axis of the mass, midway between the craters of
Kip Ghöll on the northwest and Little Ararat on the southeast, and indicates the line along which the volcanic forces
acted most powerfully. Following its course towards the base of the cone, I could see that line prolonged in a series of
small cones and craters along the top of the ridge, which connects Great and Little Ararat. Some of those craters, into
which I looked straight down from this point, were as perfect as if their fires had but just cooled, each basin-shaped
hollow surrounded by a rim of miniature black cliffs, with heaps of ashes and scoriæ piled on their sides. In the bottom
of one or two water had gathered in greenish tarns or pools.
Not knowing how far the ridge I was following might continue passable, I was obliged to stop frequently to survey
the rocks above, and erect little piles of stones to mark the way. This not only consumed time, but so completely
absorbed the attention that for hours together I scarcely noticed the marvelous landscape spread out beneath, and felt
the solemn grandeur of the scenery far less than many times before on less striking mountains. Solitude at great
heights, or among majestic rocks or forests, commonly stirs in us all deep veins of feeling, joyous or saddening, or
more often of joy and sadness mingled. Here the strain on the observing senses seemed too great for fancy or
emotion to have any scope. When the mind is preoccupied by the task of the moment, imagination is checked. This
was a race against time, in which I could only scan the cliffs for a route, refer constantly to the watch, husband my
strength by morsels of food taken at frequent intervals, and endeavor to conceive how a particular bloc or bit of slope
which it would be necessary to recognize would look when seen the other way in descending.
Fortunately, the clouds were really clouds, and not a generally diffused mist, so that, when I was not actually in
them, it was possible to see clearly all round. Two courses were open. One, which would probably have been the
better, was to bear off to the right, and get up the low cliffs at the top of the long stone slope which I had deserted, on
to the upper slopes of rock, or gently inclined snow, which lead to the top. The other was to turn back a little, and
descend to the left into a vast snow basin lying immediately southeast of the summit, and whose northwest acclivity
formed, in fact, the side of the summit. This acclivity looked a likely place for crevasses, though I do not remember to
have seen any, and was steep enough to require step cutting. Its névé would have been quite practicable for a party,
but not equally so for a single man, who might have had some trouble in stopping himself if once he slipped and went
off. Luckily there was on the east side of the basin, close under the range of precipice on the projecting point of which I
was standing, though separated from it by a narrow snow-bed, a steep slope of friable rocks, quite free from snow,
which ran up to a point where the clouds hid them, but where there seemed no sign of any cliff to bar the way. Forced
to decide between a course which was difficult, but almost certainly practicable, and another probably easier, but
possibly impracticable, I could not hesitate long in choosing the former. Retracing my steps a little from the precipice,
and climbing along the border of a treacherous little ice-slope, where there was fortunately some handhold on the
rocks enclosing it, I got into the great snow basin aforesaid, just where the gully or fissure I have already mentioned
descends from it, and attacked the friable rocks. Their angle (38 to 43 degrees) would have made them simple enough
if they had only been firm, but they were so rotten that neither hands nor feet could get firm hold, and I slipped down
and scrambled up and floundered about pitiably, having no longer steel enough in the muscles for a rush. Among
these rocks I was saluted by a violent sulphurous smell, much like that of a battery of cannon just fired off, and
perceived at the same time patches of whitish and reddish-yellow stuff efflorescing from the ground, reminding me of
similar deposits noticed on Hekia and the half extinct volcano of Krabla in Iceland. This was delightfully volcanic, and I
began to look about for some trace of an eruptive vent, or at least for hot vapors betraying the presence of
subterranean fires. Nothing of the kind, however, was to be seen. The shape of this basin makes it probable that it was
really a former seat of volcanic action; but the smell and the efflorescence are no doubt due—as Abich, who (as I
afterwards learnt) had observed them, remarks—to the natural decomposition of the trachytic rock, which is full of
minute crystals of iron pyrites (sulfide of iron). This, in disintegrating under the moisture of these heights, gives off
sulfuric acid gas, whence the smell, and combines with the lime and alumina present in the felspar of the same rock to
form sulfates of lime and alumina, mixed with more or less sulfate of iron or chloride or iron, which gives the reddish or