Not far from Noah’s tomb stands another very handsome monument; unfortunately I could not learn to whose memory it was erected, or to what age it belonged.  It consists of a high building, resembling a tower with twelve angles; the walls between the angles are covered, from top to bottom, with the most artistic mathematical figures in triangles and sexagons, and some places are inlaid with glazed tiles.  The monument is surrounded by a wall, forming a small court-yard; at the entrance-gates stand half-ruined towers, like minarets.

17th August.  I felt very unwell today, which was the more unpleasant, as the caravan started in the evening.  For several days I had been unable to take any food, and suffered from excessive lassitude.  Nevertheless I left my rest, and mounted my caravan nag; I thought that change of air would be the best restorative.

Fortunately we went only a short distance beyond the city gate, and remained there during the night and the following day.  We did not proceed any further until the evening of the 18th of August.  The caravan only conveyed goods, and the drivers were Tartars.  The journey from Natschivan to Tiflis is generally made in from twelve to fourteen days; but with my caravan, to judge from the progress we made at the commencement, it would have occupied six weeks, for on the first day we went scarcely any distance, and on the second, very little more than the first; I should have travelled quicker on foot.

19th August.  It is really unbearable.  During the whole day we lay in waste stubble-fields, exposed to the most scorching heat, and did not mount our horses until 9 o’clock in the evening; about an hour afterwards we halted, and encamped.  The only thing good about this caravan was the food.  The Tartars do not live so frugally as the Arabs.  Every evening an excellent pillau was made with good-tasting fat, frequently with dried grapes or plums.  Almost every day beautiful water and sugar-melons were brought to us to buy.  The sellers, mostly Tartars, always selected a small lot and offered it to me as a present.

The road led continually through large, fertile valleys round the foot of Ararat.  Today I saw the majestic mountain very clearly, and in tolerable proximity.  I should think we were not more than two or three miles from it.  It seemed, from its magnitude, as if separated from the other mountains, and standing alone; but it is in fact, connected with the chain of Taurus by a low range of hills.  Its highest summit is divided in such a way that between two peaks there is a small plain, on which it is said that Noah’s ark was left after the deluge.  There are people who affirm that it would still be found there if the snow could be removed.

In the more recent treatises on geography, the height of Ararat is given as 16,000 feet; in the older ones, as 11,000.  The Persians and Armenians call this mountain Macis; the Grecian writers describe it as a part of the Taurus range.  Ararat is quite barren, and covered above with perpetual snow; lower down lies the cloister, Arakilvank, at the place where Noah is said to have taken up his first abode.