Note 26 — Chapter XIII · THE HEART OF ARARAT

Behind the lofty wall of rock which is seen on the left of my illustration, in jagged outline against the snows, a glacier descends from the summit region which is probably the only true glacier on Ararat, and which I should judge to be gradually decreasing in extent. According to Abich, the long ridges which have the appearance of piles of boulders, and which are seen in his illustration descending the trough of the chasm to a point some distance below St. Jacob’s Well, were composed in 1874 of compact and dirty glacier ice, covered over with stones and débris. He informs us that in 1844 there was a direct but deeply buried connection between this ice and the ice in the circus at the lower end of the glacier; and that in 1874 this connection had been severed, and the ice-hills themselves had decreased about one-third in height.26 On the top of these ridges he discovered a series of marshes and little lakes, of which the largest was several hundred paces in circumference. I cannot testify myself to the present condition of these ice-hills; I cannot even say that they exist. I did not see any ice in the trough of the chasm, although it was evident that its present condition was largely due to ice action, and although we admired a little lake of glacier water, set like a turquoise in the waste of mud and stones. It is computed that the actual glacier descends as low as a level of about 8000 feet—a notable fact when we consider that the line of perpetual snow on this side of Ararat is as high as 14,000 feet.