MOUNT ARARAT.
This mountain, which is highly worthy of our notice as the one on which the ark rested, is, by the general consent of western Asia and of Europe, decided to be the mountain of Ara Dagh in Armenia; and that this opinion is correct, would seem plain from the statement of the Bible that Ararat was in Armenia, taken in connection with the fact, that in all that country there is no mountain comparable to this. It is in all respects a most noble mountain, and one of the finest in the world. “When our eyes first beheld it,” says Kitto, “we had already seen the loftiest and most remarkable mountains of the old world; but yet the effect of the view of this mountain was new and surprising. The reason appeared to be this, that most of the loftiest mountains of the world are but peaks of the uppermost ridge of mountain chains; but Ararat, though not so high as many of these, is far more grand and impressive, because it is not merely the summit of a ridge, but a whole and perfect mountain.” “Nothing,” as Mr. Morier well remarks, “can be more beautiful than its shape, or more awful than its hight; all the surrounding mountains sink into insignificance when compared with it. It is perfect in all its parts; having no hard, rugged features, and no unnatural prominences; but everything is in harmony, and all combines to render it one of the sublimest objects of nature.” It rises from the valley of the river Aras, the ancient Araxes, gradually towering from its broad base, till it reaches the region of perpetual snow, (which is about one-third below its summit,) when it becomes more conical and steep, and is surmounted with a crown of ice which glitters in the sun with peculiar brightness. And near to this peak, and rising from the same broad base, is another almost exactly like it, but smaller, which is doubtless the reason why the sacred text speaks of “the mountains of Ararat,” rather than of a single mountain. The tallest of the two is seventeen thousand, seven hundred and fifty, and the lowest thirteen thousand, four hundred and twenty feet above the level of the sea, which is some three thousand feet lower than the plain on which Ararat stands. The top of the mountain, it is said, was never reached till 1829, when Mr. Parrot, a German, succeeded in climbing to it, and there found a slightly convex, and almost circular plain, some two hundred and twenty feet in diameter, declining steeply on all sides; from which some suppose, that the ark must have rested on the lesser Ararat, as it would have been difficult for its inmates, including heavy cattle, to have descended from the higher summit.