bed over a long steep slope of loose broken stones and sand. This
slope, a sort of talus or "screen" as they say in the Lake country, was
excessively fatiguing from the want of firm foothold; and when I reached
the other side, I was already so tired and breathless, having been on
foot since midnight, that it seemed almost useless to persevere farther.
However, on the other side I got upon solid rock, where the walking was
better, and was soon environed by a multitude of rills bubbling down
over the stones from the stone-slopes above. The summit of Little
Ararat, which had for the last two hours provokingly kept at the same
apparent height above me, began to sink, and before ten o'clock I could
look down upon its small flat top, studded with lumps of rock, but
bearing no trace of a crater. Mounting steadily along the same ridge, I
saw at a height of over thirteen thousand feet, lying on the loose
blocks, a piece of wood about four feet long and five inches thick,
evidently cut by some tool, and so far above the limit of trees that it
could by no possibility be a natural fragment of one. Darting on it with
a glee that astonished the Cossack and the Kurd, I held it up to them,
and repeated several times the word "Noah." The Cossack grinned; but he
was such a cheery, genial fellow that I think he would have grinned
whatever I had said, and I cannot be sure that he took my meaning, and
recognized the wood as a fragment of the true Ark. Whether it was really
gopher wood, of which material the Ark was built, I will not undertake
to say, but am willing to submit to the inspection of the curious the
bit which I cut off with my ice-axe and brought away. Anyhow, it will be
hard to prove that it is not gopher wood. And if there be any remains of
the Ark on Ararat at all,--a point as to which the natives are perfectly
clear,--here rather than the top is the place where one might expect to
find them, since in the course of ages they would get carried down by
the onward movement of the snow-beds along the declivities. This wood,
therefore, suits all the requirements of the case. In fact, the argument
is for the case of a relic exceptionally strong: the Crusaders who found
the Holy Lance at Antioch, the archbishop who recognized the Holy Coat
at Treves, not to speak of many others, proceeded upon slighter
evidence. I am, however, bound to admit that another explanation of the
presence of this piece of timber on the rocks of this vast heig