Note 5 — Chapter XIII · THE HEART OF ARARAT

Several travellers have presented us with a description of the locality as it existed before those events.5 Some 10 miles from the banks of the Kara Su, on the base or pedestal of Ararat, at a height of some 5600 feet above the sea, or 2900 feet above the plain,6 was situated the Armenian village of Akhury or Arguri—the only village, we are informed by Dubois, which had hazarded a position on the side of the mountain,7 and a place which boasted a remote antiquity. According to Armenian tradition, it was there that Noah built the altar, and offered up the burnt sacrifice, after his departure from the Ark and safe descent of the mountain, with his family and the living creatures of every kind. It was at Akhury or Arguri—a name which is said to signify in the Armenian language he has planted the vine8—that, according to the same tradition, the patriarch planted his vineyard and drank to excess of its wine. The inhabitants would point to an ancient willow of stunted growth, bent by the action of snow and ice; it stood in an isolated spot above the village, a rare object on a mountain which is almost devoid of trees. They believed that it drew its origin from a plank of the Ark which had taken root; and they would not suffer any damage to be done to the sacred object, or the least of its branches to be taken away. The population amounted to about 1000 souls;9 the houses numbered some two hundred, and were built of stone with the usual flat roofs. The settlement owed its prosperity, and even its existence, to a stream which then, as now, issued from the jaws of the chasm, fed by the melting ice and snow. It was placed at the open exit from the gorge, where the trough flattens out into the base. The church and the larger portion of the village were on the right bank of the stream; on the left, opposite the church, stood a square-shaped fortress, built of clay after the fashion of the country. A near eminence was crowned by the walls of a spacious palace, which served as a summer residence for the Persian sirdars of Erivan. It was indeed a delightful resort during the heats of summer. A cool draught descended from the snows of the summit region; and the little stream supported considerable vineyards and orchards, so that the traveller, on approaching Akhury, could take refuge from the glare of the plain in quite a little wood of apricot trees. The church—said to have been called Araxilvank (Arakelotz Vank?)—was reputed to have been built on the site of Noah’s altar. It dated from the eighth or ninth century; and to such a height had the ground about it risen since its foundation, that the two side doors had become embedded in soil up to the crossbeams. Just beyond this pleasant oasis you entered the chasm, and, after proceeding for nearly two miles up its boulder-strewn hollow, you reached the little monastery of St. Jacob, which stood on the edge of a natural terrace a few hundred feet above the bottom of the gulf, immediately overlooking the right bank of the stream. The chasm had at this spot a depth of some 600 to 800 feet,10 and the elevation of the site of the monastery above sea-level was 6394 feet.11 Parrot, who established his headquarters in this lonely cloister, has handed down to us a charming illustration of the place, and a pleasant description of the chapel, with its walled enclosure and garden and orchard, the residence, at the time of his visit, of a single monk. Like the church of Akhury, it commemorated a religious event in the story of Ararat. A monk of the name of Jacob, afterwards bishop of Nisibis, reputed to have been a contemporary and relative of St. Gregory, was seized with the desire to convince the sceptics of the truth of the Biblical narrative, and to assure himself of the presence of the Ark on the summit of Ararat by the evidence of his own eyes. In the pursuit of this purpose he made several attempts to scale the mountain from the north-east side. On each occasion he fell asleep, exhausted by the effort; as often as he awoke, he would find that he had been miraculously transported to the point from which he had set out. At length God looked with compassion upon his fruitless labours, and sent an angel who appeared to him in his sleep. The Divine message was to the effect that the summit was unattainable by mortal man; but the angel deposited on his breast a fragment of the holy Ark, as a reward for his faith and pains.12 Beyond St. Jacob’s, on the same or eastern side of the chasm and on the edge of the precipice, was situated a tiny shrine, built of hewn stone, at an altitude of about 1000 feet above the monastery.13 It stood by the side of one of the rare springs which are found on Ararat—a well of which the waters are still deemed to possess miraculous powers, and which still attracts numerous pilgrims from the plains. As you followed the gulf still further, the sides increased in steepness and the abyss in depth, until, at a distance of about two and a half miles from the cloister,14 it ended in an almost perpendicular wall of rock which towered up to the snowy cornice of the dome. Tournefort, whose description is in other respects fantastic, has used language to portray the aspect of the upper end of the chasm which would be true at the present day. He speaks of the terrible appearance of the ravine, one of those natural wonders which testify to the greatness of the Saviour, as his Armenian companion observed. He could not help trembling as he overlooked the precipices, and he asks his readers, if they would form some conception of the character of the phenomenon, to imagine one of the loftiest mountains in the world opening its bosom to a vertical cleft. From the heights above, masses of rock were continually falling into the abyss with a noise that inspired fear.15