ARARAT. 
185 
a burning state. This part of Asia was well known to the 
ancient historians, from being the seat of certain wars they 
describe; and it cannot be supposed, that had so conspicuous a 
mountain been often, or ever (within the knowledge of man), 
in a state of volcanic eruption, we should not have heard of it, 
from Strabo, Pliny, Ptolemy, or others ; but on the contrary, 
all these writers are silent on such a subject with regard to 
Ararat; while every one who wrote in the vicinities of Etna, 
or of Vesuvius, had something to say of the thunders and molten 
fires of those mountains. That there are volcanic remains, to 
a vast extent, around Ararat, every person who visits its neigh¬ 
bourhood must testify ; and, giving credit to Doctor Renigg’s 
assertion, that an explosion of the mountain had happened in his 
time, I determined to support so interesting a fact, with the 
evidence of every observation on my part, when I should reach 
the spot. But on arriving at the monastery of Eitch-mai-adzen, 
where my remarks must chiefly be made, and discoursing with 
the fathers on the idea of Ararat having been a volcano, I found 
that a register of the general appearances of the mountain, had 
been regularly kept by their predecessors and themselves, for 
upwards of eight hundred years; and that nothing of an erup¬ 
tion, or any thing tending to such an event, was to be found in 
any one of those notices. When I spoke of an explosion of the 
mountain having taken place in the year 1783, and which had 
been made known to Europe, by a traveller declaring himself 
to have been an eye-witness, they were all in surprise; and, 
besides the written documents to the contrary, I was assured by 
several of the holy brethren, who had been resident in the plain 
for upwards of forty years, that during the whole of that period 
they had never seen even a smoke from the mountain. There- 
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VOL. i. 
