This historic book may have numerous typos and missing text. Purchasers can usually download a free scanned copy of the original book (without typos) from the publisher. Not indexed. Not illustrated. 1897 edition. Excerpt: ... scale Ararat belongs to the Russian traveller Parrot, who made the ascent in 1829. Since that time the number of successful ascents has been, so far as I have been able to determine, fourteen, including our own. Of this total of fifteen the credit of eight belongs to Russia, while five fall to England, one to Germany, and one to the United States of America. H v T The sun had already risen as I let myself down through the open casement of the window and dropped into the garden among the dry brushwood encumbering its sandy floor. Not a soul was stirring, and not a sound disturbed the composure of an Eastern morning, the great world fulfilling its task in silence, and all nature sedate and serene. A narrow strip of plantation runs at the back of Aralykh, on the south, sustained by ducts from the Kara Su or Blackwater, a stream which leads a portion of the waters of the Araxes into the cotton-fields and marshes which border the right bank. Within this fringe of slim poplars, and just on its southern verge, there is a little mound and an open summer-house, --as pleasant a place as it is possible to imagine, but which, perhaps, only differs from other summer-houses in the remarkable situation which it occupies, and in the wonderful view which it commands. It is placed on the extreme foot of Ararat, exactly on the line where all inclination ceases and the floor of the plain begins. It immediately faces the summit of the larger mountain, bearing about southwest. Before you the long outline of the Ararat fabric fills the southern horizon; the gentle undulations of the northwestern slope, as it gathers from its lengthy train; the bold bastions of the snow-fields rising to the rounded dome; and, farther east, beyond the saddle, where the...