"When I undertook, in the year 1843, a journey to Russian Armenia, Mount Ararat was the object I had particularly in view. Various circumstances then compelled me to content myself with a visit to the north side of that mountain. But in the following year, during my journey to Turkish Armenia and Persia, it was vouchsafed me to explore the previously entirely unknown south side of the Ararat group, and to abide upon Turkish and Persian territory, in the vicinity of the mighty boundary-stone of three great empires. The striking position of Ararat, almost equidistant from China and from the Iberian peninsula, from the ice-bound Lena in the high northern latitudes of Siberia, and from the slimy current of the Ganges in Southern Hindostan, has at all periods attracted the attention of geographers. For years I had harboured the ardent wish to visit the mysterious mountain. Towering in the centre of the Old Continent, an image of the fire whose mighty remains extend to the regions of eternal ice, Ararat is indicated by Jewish and Armenian tradition as the peak of refuge, round which the deluge roared, unable to overflow it. From the summit of the gigantic cone descended the pairs of all creatures, whose descendants people the earth." On Ararat, as in many other places, tradition and science disagree. Diluvial traces are sought there in vain. On the other hand, evidences of volcanic devastation on every side abound; and a wish to investigate this, and to ascertain the details of the subterranean commotion that had destroyed Arguri three years previously, was one of the principal motives of Dr Wagner's visit to Armenia. Towards the middle of May he started from Tefflis, the most important town of the Russian trans-Caucasian provinces, accompanied by Abowian, a well-educated Armenian and accomplished linguist, and attended by Ivan, the doctor's Cossack, a sharp fellow, and a faithful servant after his kind, but, like all his countrymen, an inveterate thief. Their vehicle was a Russian _telega_, or posting carriage, springless, and a perfect bone-setter on the indifferent roads of Armenia. They travelled in company with that well-known original and indefatigable traveller, General Baron Von Hallberg,[22] of whose appearance, and of the sensation it excited in the streets of Erivan, Dr Wagner gives an amusing account:--