Note 2 — Chapter XXIII · GEOGRAPHICAL

This range, to which collectively we may apply the name of Aghri Dagh or Ararat system, constitutes the principal intermediate line of elevation between the northern and the southern zones of peripheral mountains. It has been subjected to intense folding pressure, and during the process of bending over from an east-north-easterly to a south-easterly direction a partial fracture of the arc it describes has taken place. From the western shore of Lake Balük, an upland sheet of water lying at a level of 7389 feet, we are, perhaps, justified in tracing the extension of one branch of the system along the water-parting between the Murad and the Araxes south-east to the Tendurek Dagh, and through that volcano into the line of hills which divides the basin of Lake Van from the streams which find their way into the Araxes. Thence the elevation may be followed into the southern peripheral region, forming, as it were, a splinter from the chain of Zagros which has struggled upwards through the plateau country to its very heart. The prevalence of crystalline rocks, which have been classed by Loftus as granite, has been attested along the inner edge of Zagros all the way from near Khorremabad in Persia past Hamadan to the sources of the Great Zab; and they extend from the western borders of Lake Urmi at least as far as the district of Bayazid.2 It seems probable that they are in connection with the granite rocks of the Aghri Dagh, where they are found to the west of the Perli Dagh along the axis of this northern intermediate system.3