one. might describe the whole top as a triangular undulating plain, rather more than half as big as the Green Park in London, descending gently on the north-west, with extensive terraces like fields of névé, less gently towards the north-north-east, but steeply on all other sides, and on the east breaking off, after a short snowfield, in the tremendous precipices that overhang the chasm of Arguri. There was nothing about it to suggest an extinct volcano, were it not known to be But in the ages that have elapsed since the time when eruptions took place from the great central chimney of the dome, a time probably far more remote than that when the minor cones that stud the flanks of the mountain were active, all sorts of changes may have taken place, and the summit we now see may be merely the bottom of an ancient crater, whose craggy rim has been altogether broken away. Looking around, it was hard to imagine that volcanic fires. had ever raged on such a spot, robed as it now is in perpetual winter. Immeasurably extensive and grand as the view was, it was also strangely indefinite. Every mountaineer knows that the highest views are seldom the finest ; and here was one so high that the distinctions of hill and valley in the landscape were almost lost. Ararat towers so over all his neighbours, much more than Mont Blanc or even Elbruz do over theirs, that they seem mere hillocks on a uniform flat. The only rivals are in the Caucasus, which one can just make out all along the northern sky. Kazbek and Elbruz, the latter 280 miles away, are visible, but I could not be sure that I saw them, for the sky was not very clear in that direction. More distinct were the mountains of Daghestan, rising 150 miles off, over the nearer ones that engirdle the Goktcha Lake, a little bit of whose shining levels appeared. Beyond the dreary redbrown mountains of the Karabagh one strained to discover a line that might be the Caspian or the plain of the lower Kur, but, of course, at such a distance (260 miles) it would be impossible to distinguish a seasurface. The Caspian is, however, within the horizon; there are even stories of mariners who, sailing on it, have been able to 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. Looking due west, the extreme ranges of Taurus mingling with the Bingöl Dagh in the neighbourhood of Erzerum were hidden by the clouds which the wind kept driving up; but north-west 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, sea. looks forth defiance. To the south and south-west 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 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 south-east 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 of 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 centre 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 north-west, 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 laboured and died 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 are passed, O but the long long while the world shall last, 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 thy 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." Withal I am bound to say that the view, spite of |