the book of Genesis, which the Armenians, when Jews. or Christians came among them, would of course identify with their Ajrarat. Once established, the tradition held its ground, and budded out into many fantastic legends, some of them still lingering in Armenia, some only known to us by the notices of passing mediæval travellers. Marco Polo, whose route does not seem to have led him near it, says only, in speaking of Armenia :-" Here is an exceeding great mountain: on which it is said the Ark of Noah rested, and for this cause it is called the mountain of the Ark of Noah. The circuit of its base cannot be traversed in less than two days; and the ascent is rendered impossible by the snow on its summit, which never dissolves, but is increased by each successive fall. On the lower declivities the melted snows cause an abundant vegetation, and afford rich pastures for the cattle which in summer resort thither from all the surrounding countries." But the Franciscan friar, William of Rubruk, who, in 1254, a little before Marco Polo's time, had on his return from Karakorum passed under Ararat, says that here upon the higher of two great mountains above the river Araxes the Ark rested, which mountain cannot be ascended, though the earnest prayers of a pious monk prevailed so far that a piece of the wood of the Ark was brought to him by an angel, which piece is still preserved in a church near by as a holy relic. He gives Massis as the name of this mountain, and adds that it is the mother of the world: "super Massis nullus debet ascendere quia est mater mundi.”

After

Sir John Maundeville, of pious and veracious memory, has also a good deal to tell us. speaking of Trapazond (Trebizond), and stating that from there "men go to Ermonye (Armenia) the Great unto a cytee that is clept Artyroun (Erzerum), that was wont to ben a gode cytee and a plentyous, but the Turkes han gretly wasted it," he proceeds: "Fro Artyroun go men to an Hille that is clept Sabisocolle. And there besyde is another Hille that men clepen Ararathe: but the Jews clepen it Taneez, where Noes Schipp rested: and zit is upon that Montayne: and men may see it a ferr in cleer wedre: and that Montayne is well a 7 Myle high. And sum men seyn that they have seen and touched the Schipp; and put here Fyngres in the parties where the Feend went out whan that Noe seyd' Benedicite.' But thei that seyn such Wordes seyn here Wille, for a man may not gon up the Montayne for gret plentee of Snow that is alle weyes on that Montayne nouther Somer ne Winter; so that no man may gon up there : ne nevere man did, sithe the tyme of Noe: saf a Monk that be the grace of God broughte on of the Plankes down, that zit is in the Mynstre at the foot of the Montayne. And besyde is the Cytee of Dayne that Noe founded. And faste by is the Cytee of Any, in the whiche were 1000 churches. But upon that Montayne to gon up this Monk had gret desir; and so upon a day he wente up and whan he was upward the 3 part of the Montayne he was so wery that he myghte no ferthere, and so he rested him and felle to slepe; and whan he awoke he fonde himself

liggynge at the foot of the Montayne. And then he preyede devoutly to God that he wolde vouche saf to suffre him gon up. And an Angelle cam to him and seyde that he scholde gon up; and so he did. And sithe that tyme never non. Wherfore men scholde not beleeve such Woordes."

This laudable scepticism of Sir John's prevailed, for it has long been almost an article of faith with the Armenian Church that the top of Ararat is inaccessible. Even the legend of the monk, which, as we find from Friar William, is as old as the thirteenth century, is usually given in a form which confirms still further the sacredness of the mountain. St. Jacob (Hagop), as the monk is named, was consumed by a pious desire to reach and venerate the holy Ark, which could in seasons of fair weather be descried from beneath, and three several times he essayed to climb the steep and rocky slopes. Each time, after reaching a great height, he fell into a deep sleep, and, when he woke, found himself at the foot of the mountain. After the third time, an angel appeared to him while he still lay in slumber, and told him that God had forbidden mortal foot ever to tread the sacred summit or touch the vessel in which mankind had been preserved, but that on him, in reward for his devout perseverance, there should be bestowed a fragment of its wood. This fragment he placed on the sleeper's breast, and vanished; it is that which is still preserved in the treasury at Etchmiadzin, or, as others say, in the monastery of Kjeghart; and the saint is commemorated by the little monastery of

St. Jacob, which stands, or rather stood till 1840, on the slopes of Ararat, above the valley of Arghuri, the spot of the angel's appearing. Every succeeding traveller has repeated this tale, with variations due to his informant or his own imagination: so, though the reader has probably heard it, I dare not break through a custom so long established. Among these repeaters is Sir John Chardin, who travelled through Armenia and Persia towards the end of the seventeenth century, and whose remarks upon it are as follows. They show the progress which criticism had been making since the days of the earlier Sir John.

"This is the Tale that they tell, upon which I shall observe 2 Things. First, that it has no coherence with the relations of ancient authors as Josephus, Berosus, or Nicolaus of Damascus, who assure us that the Remainders of the Ark were to be seen, and that the people took the Pitch with which it was besmeared as an Antidote against Several Distempers. The second, that whereas it is taken for a Miracle that no Body can get up to the Top: I should rather take it for a greater Miracle that any Man should climb up so high. For the Mountain is altogether uninhabited, and from the Halfway to the Top of all, perpetually covered with Snow that never melts, so that all the Seasons of the Year it appears to be a prodigious heap of nothing but Snow."

Whether Chardin himself believed the Ark to be still on the top of the mountain, does not appear. In two views of it which he gives, showing also Erivan and Etchmiadzin, the Ark appears, in shape exactly

the Ark of the nursery on Sunday afternoons, poised on the summit of Great Ararat. But this may be merely emblematic; indeed I have not found any author who says he has himself seen it, though plenty who (like the retailers of ghost stories) mention other people who have.

Religious fancy has connected many places in the neighbourhood with the Biblical narrative. Not to speak of the sites which have been suggested in the Araxes valley for the Garden of Eden, the name of Arghuri itself is derived from two Armenian words which mean, "he planted the vine"; it is taken to be the spot where Noah planted that first vineyard which is mentioned in Genesis ix. 20: and till 1840, when the village was overwhelmed by a tremendous fall of rocks, shaken down by the great earthquake of that year, an ancient vine stock, still bearing grapes, was pointed out as that which had been planted by the patriarch's hands. The town of Marand, the Marunda of Ptolemy (in Armenian = "the mother is there"), is said to be called after the wife of Noah, who there died and was buried; and (as has been mentioned already) the name of another still considerable town, Nakhitchevan, in the Araxes valley, is explained to mean, "he descended first," and has therefore been identified with the ȧroßaτnpiov of Josephus aforesaid. There too was shown, perhaps is still shown, the tomb of Noah. Modern historians and geographers have been hardly less fanciful than Armenian monks: some derive the Tatar name Aghri or Arghi Dagh from the word Arca. Some imagine a relation between this and