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

170 THE EXPLORERS OF ARARAT
make out the white cone of Ararat. Nearer at hand, only forty miles to the north, rose the huge extinct volcano of Ala
Göz, with its three sharp black rocky peaks enclosing an ancient crater, in whose bottom were patches of snow; and,
nearer still, the dim plain of Erivan encircled the mountain to the north and east, with the Araxes winding like a faint
streak of silver through it. A slight rise in the ground showed where Erivan itself lay, but the bright green of the
orchards and vineyards round it was lost at this distance, though, standing in the market-place of the city, Ararat
seems to tower right over the spectator’s head. Northwest the upper valley of the Araxes could be traced as far as Ani,
once the capital of the Armenian kingdom, and the great Russian fortress of Alexandropol, and the hills where Kars, its
enemy, looks forth defiance. To the south and southwest the eye ranged over a wilderness of bare red-brown
mountains, their sides seamed by winter torrents that showed in the distance like dark lines, not a tree nor a patch of
green on their scorched and arid slopes, scarcely even a fleck of snow on their tops, though many rose more than
10,000 or 11,000 feet above the sea. Prominent among them was the long stern line of hills that enclose the upper
course of the Euphrates (the Eastern Euphrates or Murad Su), whose source could be distinguished about forty miles
to the south, beyond the hollow where Bayazid lies, the houses of which were hidden by a low ridge. Still further to the
south, from the shores of the Lake of Van, rose the great volcanic peak of Sipan Dagh, and to the southeast the
stupendous masses of Savalan Dagh, that look over all Azerbijan to the waves of the Caspian. Neither the Lake of Van
nor the still larger Lake of Urumia was visible; for both, though high above the sea, are enclosed by lofty hills. But far
beyond them, more than two hundred miles away, I could just descry the faint blue tops of the Assyrian mountains of
Southern Kurdistan, the Qardu land, where Chaldee tradition places the fragments of the Ark, mountains that look
down on Mosul and those huge mounds of Nineveh by which the Tigris flows. Below and around, included in this
single view, seemed to lie the whole cradle of the human race, from Mesopotamia in the south to the great wall of the
Caucasus that covered the northern horizon, the boundary for so many ages of the civilized world. If it was indeed here
that man first set foot again on the unpeopled earth, one could imagine how the great dispersion went as the races
spread themselves from these sacred heights along the courses to the great rivers down to the Black and Caspian
Seas, and over the Assyrian plain to the shores of the Southern Ocean, whence they were wafted away to other
continents and isles. No more imposing center of the world could be imagined. In the valley of the Araxes beneath, the
valley which Armenian legend has selected as the seat of Paradise, the valley that has been for three thousand years
the high-road for armies, the scene of so much slaughter and misery, there lay two spots which seemed to mark the
first and the latest points of authentic history. One, right below me, was the ruined Artaxata, built, as the tale goes, by
Hannibal, and stormed by the legions of Lucullus. The other, far to the northwest, was the hollow under the hills in
which lies the fortress of Kars, where our countrymen fought in 1854, and where the flames of war were so soon again
to be lighted.
Yet how trivial history, and man the maker of history, seemed. This is the spot which he reveres as the supposed
scene of his creation and his preservation from the destroying waters, a land where he has lived and labored and dies
ever since his records begin, and during ages from which no record is left. Dynasty after dynasty has reared its
palaces, faith after faith its temples, upon this plain; cities have risen and fallen and risen again in the long struggle of
civilization against the hordes of barbarism. But of all these works of human pomp and skill, not one can be discerned
from this height. The landscape is now what it was before man crept forth on the earth; the mountains stand about the
valleys as they stood when the volcanic fires that piled them up were long ago extinguished. Nature sits enthroned,
serenely calm, upon this hoary pinnacle, and speaks to her children only in the storm and earthquake that level their
dwellings in the dust. As says the Persian poet:
“When you and I behind the veil have passed,
O but the long long while the world shall last,
Which of our coming and departure heeds
As the Seven Seas should heed a pebble’s cast.”
Yet even the mountains change and decay. Every moment some block thunders from these crags into the glens
below. Day by day and night by night frost, snow, and rain are loosening the solid rock, and the ceaseless action of
chemical forces is dissolving it into its primal elements, setting free the gases, and delivering over the fragments to
torrents that will sweep them down into the plain. A time must come, if the world lasts long enough, when even the
stately peaks of Ararat will have crumbled away and be no more. “Of old hast thou laid the foundations of the earth:
and the heavens are the work of the hands. They shall perish, but thou shalt endure: they all shall wax old as doth a
garment; and as a vesture shalt thou change them, and they shall be changed; but thou art the same, and thy years
fail not.”
In addition I am bound to say that the view, spite of the associations it evoked, spite of the impression of awe and
mystery it gave, was not beautiful or splendid, but rather stern, grim, and monotonous. The softer colors of the
landscape seemed to be lost; the mountains, seen from above and seldom showing well-marked peaks, were uncouth,
rough-hewn masses. One had a sense of vast sterility and dreariness as the vision ranged over this boundless
expanse of brown, and sought, almost in vain, a point to recognize. For most of these huge mountains are nameless
on our maps; and these bare valleys are peopled by races of whom we know little except that they live now much as
they may have lived when that first dispersion of mankind took place. Then suddenly, while the eye was still unsatisfied