MOUNT ARARAT. Morier, who spent some time at its foot, makes no mention of any appearances of this kind, and that nothing which favours such an hypothesis can be extracted from Tournefort, a traveller, who, though principally attentive to botany, appears, from the notice he has taken of the Island of Santorino and other places in the Archipelago, to have been alive to the existence of volcanic phænomena when they came before him. The most recent account of this mountain is that given by Ker Porter,* which, as it includes all the information that is to be gleaned from other sources, I shall extract entire. "On viewing Mount Ararat from the northern side of the plain, its two heads are seen separated by a wide cleft, or rather glen, in the body of the mountain. The rocky side of the greater head runs almost perpendicularly down to the north-east, whilst the lesser head rises from the sloping bosom of the cleft in a perfectly conical shape. Both heads are covered with snow. The form of the greater is similar to the less, only broader and rounder at the top, and shows, to the north-west, a broken and abrupt front, opening, about half-way down, into a stupendous chasm, deep, rocky, and peculiarly black. At that part of the mountain, the hollow of the chasm receives an interruption from the projections of minor mountains, which start from the sides of Ararat, like branches from the root of a tree, and run along in undulating progression, till lost in the distant vapours of the plain. The dark chasm, which I have mentioned as being on the side of the great head of the mountain, is supposed by some travellers to have been the exhausted crater of Ararat. Dr. Reineggs even affirms it, by stating, that in the year 1783, during certain days in the months of January and February, an eruption took place in the mountain, and he suggests the probability, of the burning ashes ejected thence, at that time * Sir Ker Porter's Travels in Georgia, &c. vol. i. p. 182. MOUNT ARARAT. reaching to the south side of Caucasus, (a distance in a direct line of 220 wersts) and so depositing the volcanic productions, which are found there. The reason he gives for this latter supposition is, that the trap seen there did not originate in these mountains, and must consequently have been sent thither by volcanic explosions elsewhere. And that this elsewhere, which he concludes to have been Ararat, may have been that mountain, I do not pretend to deny; but those events must have taken place many centuries ago, even before history took note of the spot, for since that period we have no intimation whatever of any part of Ararat having been seen in a burning state. This part of Asia was well known to the antient historians, from being the seat of certain wars they describe; and it cannot be supposed, that had so conspicuous a mountain been often or ever (within the knowledge of man) in a state of volcanic eruption, we should not have heard of it from Strabo, Pliny, Ptolemy, or others but on the contrary, all these writers are silent on such a subject with regard to Ararat; while every one who wrote in the vicinities of Etna or of Vesu,vius, had something to say of the thunders and molten fires of these mountains. That there are volcanic remains to a vast extent round Ararat, every one who visits that neighbourhood must testify, and giving credit to Dr. Reinegg's assertion, that an explosion of the mountain had happened in his time, I determined to support so interesting a fact with the evidence of every observation on my part, when I could reach the spot. But on arriving at the monastery of Eitch-mai-adzen, where my remarks must chiefly be made, and discoursing with the fathers on the idea of Ararat having been a volcano, I found that a register of the general appearances of the mountain had been regularly kept by their predecessors and themselves for upwards of 800 years; and that nothing of RIVER KUBAN. an eruption, or any thing tending to such an event, was to be found in any of their notices. When I spoke of an explosion of the mountain having taken place in 1783, and which had been made known in Europe by a traveller declaring himself an eye-witness, they were all in surprise; and besides the written documents to the contrary, I was assured by several of the holy brethren who had been resident on the plain for upwards of 40 years, that during the whole of that period they had never seen even a smoke from the mountain. Therefore how the author fell into so very erroneous a misstatement, I can form no guess. Kinneir also notices a mountain called Sepan Dag which, he says, is conical and has every appearance of being volcanic. It is situated near the Lake of Van, in Armenia, between Erzerum and Betlis. Quantities of obsidian are found along the borders of the lake.* Ker Portert also describes and gives a plan of a valley near Erivan, which he passed on his way to Mount Ararat, the rocks of which consist of columnar basalt. The principal mountain is called from its turretted form, the Castle of Tiridates. Still farther north, near the River Kuban, between the Black Sea and the Caspian, Engelhardt and Parrot have noticed several hills composed of similar materials to the Wolkenberg, in the Siebengebirge, near Bonn. The rock consists of needle-shaped crystals of basaltic hornblende, small ditto of augite, glassy felspar, common hornblende in nests, and a little quartz. Its structure is sometimes lamellar, sometimes columnar. Its colour red. This rock is found associated with Muschelkalk, but the boundary is not well defined. * Kinneir's Travels in Asia Minor. p. 374 + Travels in Georgia, vol. 2. p. 624. 1825. Engelhardt and Parrott. Reise in dem Krym und dem Caucasus Berlin. RIVER TEREK. Neither lava nor craters occur among these mountains. Mount Kasbeck, the highest eminence in this chain, estimated by these travellers at no less than 14,400 feet, is composed of porphyry (qu. trachyte) which is columnar. The valley of Terek, a river which runs from west to east, and empties itself into the Caspian, seems to exhibit a repetition of the same rock formations which I have noticed as occurring in Hungary. We have here not only an alternation of clay-slate and greenstone with a porphyry, which appears to correspond with the older porphyry of Schemnitz, with sienite or granite, with gneiss, and even with a bituminous limestone; but we find in the vallies, and resting on the other rock formations, a clay porphyry, containing fragments of the older porphyry, a conglomerate with a porphyritic basis, and what is more curious, beds consisting chiefly of pumice. The latter is greyish, reddish, or yellowish white, porous, with a fracture partly uneven, partly fibrous―the fibres often curved. It contains plates of mica, and crystals of glassy felspar, sometimes even a little hornblende. The pumice constitutes detached conical hills, which rise up from the slope of the valley of Terek. The rock is in part like a pumiceous conglomerate, in which each separate fragment is clothed with a blackishbrown metallic coating, owing to which the parts appear with black and white stripes. Under the blocks of pumice are fragments of clayslate, which are in like manner coated. The lower stratum of these detached conical hills, is a bed of conglomerate, consisting of a yellowish-white argillaceous mass, interspersed with blocks of pumiceous porphyry and clay-slate of various sizes. A similar formation occurs at the foot of Kasbeck. It would seem from this description, that evidences of volcanic action extend over this part of the Caucasus as they do SEA OF AZOF. over Hungary, for though Engelhardt is disposed to consider the pumice a porphyry altered by weathering, yet I cannot believe that this intelligent naturalist means to question the igneous origin of such a deposit. The description, which he has himself given of the characters of this substance, is decisive on the point. At Baku, a town situated on a small peninsula which stands out on the western side of the Caspian Sea, forming a sort of advanced post of the Russian dominions, phænomena occur which have been hastily set down as volcanic. The rocks consist chiefly of a bituminous shale, which is in some places so impregnated with petroleum, that wells are sunk for the purpose of obtaining it, from some of which as much as 1000 or 1500 pounds are daily obtained. It is natural that a formation of this kind should give rise to certain pseudo-volcanic phænomena, and I believe that all the facts related by travellers, which have led to the notion of volcanic action existing there, may be referred to this cause. It would be interesting to ascertain, whether the same formation which contains the petroleum at Baku extends to the Island of Taman, near Crim Tartary, where similar phænomena have been observed, and whether it has any connexion with the bituminous limestone noticed by Engelhardt as existing in the valley of Terek. It should be mentioned however, that the sudden rise of an island in the Sea of Azof, which is stated to have happened in the year 1814, seems to lend countenance to the idea of the continuance of true volcanic action in that district even at the present period. The account is, that on the 10th of May in that year, a frightful noise was heard in the sea, round a distance of 200 toises. Flames rose from the water, accompanied by explosions as loud as those of a cannon. A thick smoke was blown about by the violence of the wind, and enormous |