CLIMBING ARARAT.

Oamaru Mail, Volume XXXIX, Issue 10783, 3 June 1911, Page 2 (Supplement)

CLIMBING ARARAT.

Ararat is not a mountain tliat- is climbed every day, or even every year. Seventeen ascents have been recorded, says the Wide World, and there is no reason to suppose that any have escaped notice. When James Bryce, unaccompanied, made his remarkable ascent in LB7G he was told by every 0110 whom lie met in the vicinity of the mountain that the top had never been readied, and what was more, that it never could lie. Jinns and liends and giants had prevented tiie rascally Kurds from even attempting to scale the terrible mountain, and since the Ark' grounded there mortal mail had not 'leen allowed to trespass 011 the sacred heights-he was informed. Had not St. Hagop tried again and again to reach the summit ill order to silence the sceptics about, the Ark? But found himself each morning 011 waking qiyetlv deposited at the base, whence he started. Filially an angel presented him with a piece of the Ark for his pains, but told him to cease his attempts to reach the forbidden ground. That was in the fourth century of our era, but the piece of the Ark is still to be seen at the monastery of. the Eitclnnaidsiu, where dwells the Catholics of the Armenian Church. That .Russians, or a stray lone Englishman, had really reached the top of Ararat was not to be thought of. Times have changed during the hist thirty years, even at the base of Ararat. The railway now goes skimming along the great waste of the Garden of Eden, the Catholicos or head of the Armenian Church, who dwells in sight of the snow-domed mountain, is an enlightened man, who presses electric buttons, turns switches and gives audience near a table covered with flypaper, and the Kurds, though ibev « ill not venture for more than two miles up. are willing to admit that other people have braved the jinns for the third mile and the still more difficult surplus.