Mountain Journeys 125 



July 31, ascent of Elbrouz; they complain only of the cold. 



Gardiner, Grove, Walker and Knubel 183 ascended to the summit 

 of Elbrouz July 28, 1874. July 27, they camped at a height of 

 11,300 feet, and the next day reached the summit: 



Everyone suffered from the rarity of the air. In 1868, not one 

 felt its effects; the peak ascended then was probably that of the east; 

 but the difference in height, if there is any, is too slight to explain 

 the immunity of the former expedition. 



It is probably the journey of Douglas Freshfield and others that 

 is referred to here. 



In the same publication is a second account, by Gardiner, 184 of 

 the same ascent: 



After we left the col, no serious difficulty appeared. However 

 Grove, Knubel and I suffered more or less in breathing, which forced 

 us to stop often; we also had what I have heard a Swiss guide call 

 "a blow in the knees". Walker had the nosebleed, but no other 

 symptom. (P. 119.) 



Armenia. The plateau of Armenia, which over a vast expanse 

 has an average altitude of over 3000 meters, is dominated by the 

 double summit of Ararat, which was well known by the ancients 

 and of which the books of the Bible speak, as everyone knows. 



But if Noah, according to the legend, could easily descend from 

 the summit to which' the waters had carried him— which, if they 

 had covered the lofty Ararat, would have left above them only its 

 neighbors Elbrouz and Demavend with the highest peaks of the 

 Andes and the Himalayas,— the ascent of the holy mountain offers 

 quite serious difficulties. However, Pierre Bergeron, a Parisian, in 

 his treatise on the Tartars, 185 gives us the following curious infor- 

 mation: 



Elmacin, an Arabian historian, relates that when the emperor 

 Heraclius was making war in Persia, and passed by the city of 

 Themanin, built, they say, by Noah on leaving the Ark, curiosity 

 urged him to ascend this mountain (Ararat, which is the Taur, as the 

 Scriptures call it, and the Greeks call it Periarde; today, it is 

 Chielder), to see whether he could find any remains of this vessel. 

 Haiton says also that in his time there were a few pieces left. (P. 66.) 



It is also to Robert Boyle 186 that we owe the first account of 

 an ascent of Ararat, with mention of the discomforts produced by 

 a stay in so lofty a place: 



Having met an ecclesiastic who had ascended the lofty mountains 

 of Armenia (on one of which, because of its great height, the people 

 of the country say that the Ark came to rest), I asked him whether 



