The Middlebury register. [volume] (Middlebury, Vt.) 1850-1882, 1878-01-18
Where Noah's Ark Rested.

volcano of immeasurable antiquity, it
peak, 1900 feet high, soaring sud
denly from the platform, which is bu
two or three thousand feet above TIN
sea; its snow line at the elevation o
a. 900 feet, trecless, waterless, solemn
and solitary, one of the sublimes
objects on the face of the earth. 1t i
Ararat, the mountain of the Ark, tht
ancient sanctuary of the Armenian faith
the centre of the once-famous kingdom
now the cornerstone of the three grca
Empires. "On the top of its lower
peak, Little Ararat, the dominions o.
the Car, the Sultan, and the Shah, the
territories of the three chief forms oI
faith that possess Western and North
crn Asia, converge to point. When
in 1928, the Gar Nicholas defeated tho
Persians and annexed round the terri
tory Erivan, his advisers insisted OF
bringing Ararat within the Russian
territory, on account of the vencration
with which ii is regarded by all the
surrounding races and which is reflect
ed OH the sovereign who possesses it,
No mountain save Sinai has such
sacred associations, and Sinai itscli
hae less of legendary lore attached to it.
Persians, Tartars, Turks and Kurds
regard the mountain with reverence as
genuine as that of the Christian races,
for its majesty, its soltariness, and be.
cause they all believe in the Deluge and
in the patriarch "laithful found'
They are all equally persuaded that
CHASSIS" is "inaccessible; !" they arc
not to be convinced by any testimony,
not that of Parrot, of Aftonomof, or OF
Abich-who respectively ascended Ara
rat, in 1929, 1881, and 1845-of Gen.
Choazk and his party, and the English
men who assembled in 1885, and it now
appears that they reject that of Mr..
Bryce, who performed, in September
of last year, the extraordinary feat OF
ascending the mountain of the Ark
alone.
The narrative of Mr.. Bryces ascent
fills one with wonder and delight, fires
ones Imagination like an astronomical
discovery, and communicates to one
something of the thrill and awe of the
loneliness and immutabilitv of the
scene on which the solitary man gazcd
when he stood on the little plain OF
snow which forms the summit of Ara
rat, "with a vividly bright sky above
it, and q wild west wind whistling
across it, clouds girding it in, and ever
and anon through the clouds glimpscs
of far-strctching valleys and mountains
away to the worlds end" 1t was only
from dawn till dark, and an immeasur-
able experience, one of those which
seems to free the spirit from bonds of
time and space, lay between those
boundaries, for him who left on the
plain and on the lower slopes of the
mountain scenes such as they had wit
messed from immemorial time. the no
mad Kurds "watering their ilocks in
the spring, pitching their goats hair
tents in the recesscs of their lonely
rocks, chanting their wildly-pathetic
airs, with neither q past to remember
nor future to plan for" and who
climbed with body and mind strained
to the utmost pitch of exertion and ex-
citement, to that platform of eternal
snow, to stand, feeble, solitary, eX-
ulting. covering atom in the vastness.
between the cloud veil of Ararai and
the light-flooded sky.
Mr.. Bryce had set out on the ascent
from Aralykh, with a companion and an
escort of six armed Cossacks, accompa-
MED by an Interpreter; but the Cos
sacks failed them early in the under
taking, having no notion of the impor-
tancc of time, no notion of carving
baggage, and propensity, perfectly
good humored, but ruinous to the pur-
pose of the expedition. to sit still,
smoke and chatter. The Interpreter
was obliged TO abandon the party at
Sardarbulah, or the Governors Well,
the only high permanent camping
ground on the mountain, and the one
spot on ali the landscape where there
are trees. With their companions the
travellers had thenceforth no means of
communications, and they were at their
mercy completely, yet they felt no
fear of them and incurred no danger
from Kurds or Cossacks, only after
certain point both became equally
useless as guides, for the former never
go higher on the mountain than the
limits of pasture, and the latter have
no motive to go nearly so high. When
they had reached a height of 1900
feet, and everything lay below them
except Little Ararat opposite, and the
stupendous cone that rose from where
the friends were sitting, its glittering
SHOWS and stern black crags of lava
standing up perfectly clear in Il cloud
less sky, when they had noted the land
marks carefully, and agreed to meet
about nightfall at that spot, having a
notion that the Cossacks, who were
now widely scattered about the slope,
would at least bring them safely down
into the plain, the travellers parted. and
Mr.. Bryce commenced his solitary as
cent of the peak, held by the Armeni-
ans TO he guarded by angels from the
profaning foot of man, and by the
Kurds TO be the haunts of Jim who take
vengeance OH mere human disturbance
of their devils revelry. At eight
o'clock he started, carrying with him
his ice axe. lemon, small flask of
cold tea, four hard boiled eggs, and a
few meat loZenges, Oh the perilous
journey, whose dangers were of that
most formidable kind, the unknown,
and, climbing way to the left along to
the top of ridge, came to a snOw-bcd,
lying over loose broken stones and
sand, so fatiguing to cross, that he al
most gave in on the far side of il.
There he found solid rock, however,
and the summit of Little Ararat began
to sink, and that means real progress.
AT ten o'clock he was looking down
upon its small fiat top, studded with
Jumps of rock, but bearing no trace of a
crater. Up TO this point one Cossack
and one kurd had accompanied him
they were nightly amused by the ice
AK and curious as to its use-but the
Kurd stopped now, shiverlng on the
verge of long, treacherons snow
slope, in which steps had TO be cut, and
afterward the Cossack, who had cross
ed the snow slope, looked up at the
broken cliff above them which had to
be scaled, and shook his head. Mr.,
Bryce made him understand by panto-
mine that he was TO return to the biv-
ouac below, bade him farewell, aud set
his face to the great peak Little Ara.
rat now lying one thousand feet below
the eye. He climbed the crags which
had appalled, the Cossack, and emerg-
ed on a straight slope OF volcanic
stones. which rolled about So that he
slipped down nearly as mrrh as he