The space of level ground between the two mountains cannot much exceed three-quarters of a mile. On the east the graceful seams of Little Ararat rise immediately from the slope upon our right, gathering just beyond the covert of low birchwood, and converging in the form of a pyramid towards a summit which has been broken across the point. The platform of this valley is a base for Little Ararat--the rib on the flank of the greater mountain from which the smaller proceeds. So sharp are the lines of the Little Ararat, so clean the upward slope, that the summit, when seen from this pass or saddle, seems to rise as high in the heaven above us as the dome of Great Ararat itself. The burnt grass struggles towards the little birch covert, but scarcely touches the higher seams. The mountain side is broken into a loose rubble; deep gullies sear it in perpendicular furrows, which contribute to the impression of height. The prevailing colour of the stones is a bleached yellow verging upon a delicate pink; but these paler strata are divided by veins of bluish andesite pointing upwards, like spear-heads, from the base (Fig. 33). Very different, on the side of Great Ararat, are the shapes which meet the eye. We are facing the south-eastern slope of the mountain, the slope which follows the direction of its axis, the short side or gable of the dome. In the descending train of the giant volcano this valley is but an incidental or lesser feature; yet it marks, and in a sense determines, an important alteration in the disposition of the surface forms. It is here that the streams of molten matter descending the mountain side have been arrested and deflected from their original direction, to fall over the massive base. The dam or obstacle which has produced this deviation is the sharp, harmonious figure of the lesser Ararat, emerging from the sea of piled-up boulders, and cleaving the chaos of troughs and ridges like the lofty prow of a ship. The course of these streams of lava is signalised by these causeways of agglomerate rocks; you may follow from a point of vantage upon the mountain the numerous branches into which they have divided to several parent or larger streams. On this side of Ararat they have been turned in an oblique direction, from south-east towards north-east; they skirt the western margin of the little valley, curving outwards to the river and the plain. It is just beneath the first of these walls of loose boulders that our two little tents are pitched; beyond it you see another, and yet another still higher, and above them the dome of snow.