“The fabric of Ararat composes an elliptic figure with an axis from northwest to southeast. The base plan measures about twenty-eight miles in length, and about twenty-three miles in width. The fabric is built up by two mountains. Greater Ararat (16,916 feet above the sea) and Little Ararat (12,840 feet above the sea). Their bases are contiguous at a level of 8800 feet, and their summits are seven miles apart. Both are due to eruptive volcanic action; but no eruption of Ararat is known to have occurred during the historical period, and the summit of the greater mountain presents all the appearance of a very ancient and much worndown volcano with a central chimney or vent, long since filled in.”[2] From this central plateau, the highest mountain in Armenia, the land slopes down in all directions. On the south it inclines toward the Lake of Van and the plains of Mush; on the east toward the lower valley of Araxes, on the north to the middle valley of Araxes, and on the northeast and east toward the plains of Kars and Erzerum. “Along the line of the fortieth degree of latitude a succession of plains extend across the tableland, varying in their depression below the higher levels, watered by the Araxes and by the upper course of the western Euphrates, and each giving access to the other by natural passages. The first is the valley of the Araxes, with its narrower continuation westwards through the district between Kagyzman and Khorasan; the second is the plain of Pasin; the third the plain of Erzerum. Yet while the plains of Pasin and Erzerum are situated respectively at an altitude of fifty-five hundred feet and fifty-seven hundred and fifty feet, the valley of the Araxes in the neighborhood of Erivan is only twenty-eight hundred feet above the sea. Both on the north and south of this considerable depression, even the plainer levels of the tableland attain the imposing altitude of seven thousand feet, while its surface has been uplifted by volcanic action into long and irregular convexities of mountain and hill and hummock.”[3] Instances of earthquake are not uncommon but fortunately not very frequent. In the early part of the eleventh century of the Christian era, King John was frightened by an earthquake and an eclipse of the moon as forebodings of coming calamity upon his kingdom and capital Ani. It is believed by some that the isolation of the rock of Van itself might have been due to some violent earthquake in the remote past causing its present separation, from the heights adjacent on the east. “Several visitations (earthquake) of considerable severity have probably occurred during the historical period, thus we learn that in the year 1648 of the Christian era, one-half of the wall of the fortified city, as well as churches, mosques, and private houses were shattered by successive shocks, and fell to the ground.”[4]