Jan. lo, [878] 



NA TURE 



20 • 



ARARAT^• 



IN the childhood of mankind the dwellers in Western 

 Asia cherished the story of a great flood wfeich 

 drowned all their race save one man and his family. 

 They told the tale from father to son, how the flood rose 

 till it covered their highest hills, and how the ark in which 

 their ancestor had saved himself, his family, and a motley 

 crowd of animals floated on the waters until, when these 

 abated, it came to rest on the first emerging summit of 

 the land. They chose as the scene of this new starting- 

 point for humanity the loftiest peak of which they had 

 knowledge — a vast snowy cone shooting far into the blue 

 air above, and shrouding itself every day in cloud and 

 storm. No one had ever climbed to its mysterious sum- 

 mit since the ark rested there. But generation after 

 generation looked up to it with awe and veneration from 

 the plains of Armenia. The story spread far away into 

 other lands. It became part of the religious teaching of 

 nearly a half of mankind. No mountain is so familiar, 

 all the world over, as that from which Noah is famed to 



have descended to re-people the earth. The first con- 

 ception which, as children, most of us have formed of a 

 mountain, arose out of this story of Ararat. 



Apart from its legendary associations and the mystery 

 arising from its reputed inaccessibility, there must be 

 something strangely fascinating about Ararat. Men who 

 have seen much of mountains m many countries speak of 

 it as the noblest mass among them all. The summit of 

 its snowy cone (17,000 feet) greatly exceeds any European 

 peak in elevation, and sweeps up from the level plam of 

 the Araxes (2,500 feet) as from a sheet of water. Ic 

 looks as if it might well claim to be linked with the 

 oldest of human traditions. 



So impressive a mountain, so long associated with 

 man's faith and history, would have been appropriately 

 placed among the most ancient landscapes of the earth's 

 surface. Some scenes suggest only the changes of yester- 

 day ; others set us thinking of the earliest condition of 

 our world. We naturally look for a kind of consonance 

 between the venerable antiquity of the associations which 

 gather round Ararat and the primeval character of the 



Great and Lesser Ararat from the North-east. 



mountain itself. But geology delights in contrasts, and 

 nowhere could so impressive a contrast be found between 

 the remoteness of the tradition and the comoarative 

 youth of the mountain on which it lingers. Here we 

 find no colossal pyramid of granite with outer folds of 

 more ancient rocks such as have been built up and carved 

 into the oldest mountain- chains. In reality it is but a 

 mountain of yesterday, possibly not so old as the advent 

 of man upon the earth, certainly much younger than 

 many plants and animals now living. 



To a student of the evolution of the earth's surface- 

 features there is something pro'oundly suggestive in the 

 long fine of depressions and ridges which separates 

 Europe from Africa, and stretches eastward through the 

 heart of Asia. On the one hand, he sees the basins 

 of the Mediterranean, Black, Dead, Caspian, and Aral 

 Seas ; on the other he notes how, in a general sense, 

 parallel with these deep troughs, run massive mountain 

 ridges, including the great axis of the Old World. He 



■ Transcaucasia and Ararat. By James Brycc. 

 and Co., 1877.) 



(London : Macmillan 



finds, on closer research, that while most of these ridges 

 have received their latest upheavals at a recent geolo- 

 gical date, they yet for the greater part belong originally to 

 earlier periods of disturbance, some of them, indeed, 

 bearing witness to many successive uplifts during a vast 

 section of geological time. Yet further examination will 

 bring before him evidence that along some of these lines of 

 earth-folding, volcanic action has of old been abundant ; 

 and that the present Mediterranean volcanoes are but the 

 lingering remnants of the chain of actively burning moun- 

 tains which ran through Asia Minor and crowned the 

 peaks of the Caucasus. And he will discover that just 

 as there have been successive uplKts of the same axis 

 or mountain-chain, so have there been widely-separated 

 outbursts of volcanic activity during a long course of ages 

 from the same focus o^ discharge. 



It is in relation to this remarkable history that Mount 

 Ararat acquires its main geological interest. Than'cs 

 chiefly to the veteran Abich a good deal is now known of 

 the geology of the Caucisian and Transcaucaslan ridges. 

 He has shown how a nucleus of Devonian and car- 



