Note 5 — Chapter XII · ASCENT OF ARARAT

A little stream trickles down the valley, but sinks exhausted at this season before reaching the sirdar’s well. In the early summer it is of the volume of a torrent, which winds past the encampment, like a serpent of silver, uttering a dull, rumbling sound.5 It is fed by the water from the snow-fields, and there is said to be a spring which contributes to support it at a height of nearly 11,000 feet.6 After half an hour’s walk over the stony surface of the platform—the ragged herbage burnt yellow by the sun—we entered the narrows of the mountain saddle, and followed the dry bed of this rivulet at the foot of rocky spurs. The tufts of sappy grass sparsely studded on the margin of the water-course gave place, as we advanced, to a continuous carpet of soft and verdant turf; here and there the eye rested on the deep green of the juniper, or the graceful fretwork of a wild rose tree quivered in the draught. The warm rays flashed in the thin atmosphere, and tempered the searching breeze. The spurs on our right descend from the shoulder of Great Ararat, from the causeway of which it forms the head, and are seen to diverge into two systems as they enter the narrow pass. The one group pushes forward to the Little Ararat and is lost in confused detail; the other and, perhaps, the larger system bends boldly along the side of the valley, sweeping outwards towards the base. At three o’clock we reached a large pool of clouded water, collected on a table surface of burnt grass; close by is an extensive bed of nettles, and a circle of loose stones. This spot is, no doubt, the site of a Kurdish encampment, and appeared to have been only recently abandoned by the shepherds and their flocks. The further we progressed, the more the prospect opened over the slopes of Ararat; we were approaching the level of the tops of the ridges which skirt the valley side. Passing, as we now were, between the two Ararats, we again remarked that the greater seemed no higher than the lesser, so completely is the eye deceived. In the hollows of the gully there were small pools of water, but the stream itself was dry.