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Hills and ships always seem to me to be alive, and I think they have a personality of their own. Ararat stands for the unassailable. It is like some great fact, such as that what is beautiful must be true.
The Sovereign is the highest height of the system, is, in that system, like Jupiter among the Roman gods, first without a second. "Nec viget quicquam simile aut secundum." Not, like Mont Blanc, with rivals in his neighborhood; but like Ararat or Etna, towering alone and unapproachable.
The first part of my route lay over Tendong, a very fine mountain, which rises 8,613 feet, and is a conspicuous feature from Dorjiling, where it is known as Mount Ararat. The Lepchas have a curious legend of a man and woman having saved themselves on its summit, during a flood that once deluged Sikkim.
The account of this second journey of the Polos may be read in the wonderful book which Marco afterwards wrote to describe the wonders of the world. They went from Lajazzo through Turcomania, past Mount Ararat, where Marco heard tell that Noah's ark rested, and where he first heard also of the oil wells of Baku and the great inland sea of Caspian.
He sniffed the liquor and smacked his lips. 'O rare milk of Ararat! he said, 'it is sweet and strong, and sets the heart at ease. And now get the backgammon-board, John, and set it for us on the table. So they fell to the game, and I took a sly sip at the liquor, but nearly choked myself, not being used to strong waters, and finding it heady and burning in the throat.
Riccabocca's thin lips took an expression almost malignant. "Per Bacco!" said he; "in every country I observe that the rooks settle where the trees are the finest. I am sure that, when Noah first landed on Ararat, he must have found some gentleman in black already settled in the pleasantest part of the mountain, and waiting for his tenth of the cattle as they came out of the Ark."
Bangs leaned forward and peered around the edge of the wet windshield. "Is that it?" he asked, in much the same tone that Mrs. Noah may have used when her husband announced that the lookout had sighted Ararat. Raish Pulcifer nodded. "Yes, sir," he declared, proudly. "Yes, sir, that's East Wellmouth."
Wherever he went, whether he was on the borders of Turkey, in Armenia, or in the Caucasus, where he proceeded after a winter in England, he made the best of his opportunities and saw all he could of the country and the people. He was as fond as ever of expeditions and adventures, and climbed Ararat till a blinding snowstorm came on and the guides refused to proceed.
Well may the Armenians glory in "their" Ararat, peerless among the mighty works of the Creator, almost symmetrical in its outlines, and rising to an altitude of 16,916 feet above the sea, Lesser Ararat, 12,840 feet, looking almost dwarfed by the side of its mighty neighbour.
But, leaving modern theories on the origin of natural gas and petroleum, we may suppose the natural gas jets now burning in the fissures of the Caucasus to have started up in flames about the time when, according to the Old Testament, Noah descended from Mount Ararat, or very soon thereafter.
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