Note 23 — Chapter XIII · THE HEART OF ARARAT

As we proceeded, this hollow formation became more pronounced; we were approaching the mouth of the chasm. We observed how much more copious was the flora which covers this portion of the base. In place of the burnt herbage over which we had ridden on our journey to Sardar Bulakh, we here admired an abundant growth of low and thorny bushes of which the tiny and delicate pink and white flowers were showered upon a ground of grey and green (Atraphaxis spinosa). Long streamers of sansola (Kochia prostrata, Schrad.) bent towards us, and gigantic yellow grasses rose like spears (Calamagrostis epigejos, Roth.). The stream which issues from the chasm—exhausted at this season—feeds and fertilises the sandy soil, and, perhaps, the layers of mud which were left by the flood of 1840 have not been without effect on the nature of the land. We were reminded of that catastrophe by the huge fragments of conglomerate rock which are strewn over the hollow throughout a considerable area. On our return I took a photograph of the largest of these crags, where it lay, among bouquets of spangled atraphaxis, outlined against the sky (Fig. 38). Abich informs us that the fragment which lies immediately in front of it was incorporated with it at the time of his first visit in 1844; the mass then measured at the base 285 feet in circumference, with a height of 45 feet.23 I have already said that this careful investigator was able to trace its origin to a site at the upper end of the chasm, overhanging the abyss. According to his theory, it must have fallen in after the first act of the catastrophe, and been transported in the course of the second act to its present place. It was pushed down the trough of the ravine and over the gentle incline of these basal slopes by the action of the viscous stream, until that action lost its force when the stream was freed from the compression of the gorge and radiated outwards over the pedestal.24 To us plain people the position of these crags was a source of amazement, and the Greeks would have made the chasm the residence of a Cyclops who hurled such missiles at adventuresome men.