Assur-nazir-pal had thoroughly reorganised the empire and raised it to the rank of a great power: he had confirmed his provinces and vassal states in their allegiance, and had subsequently reduced to subjection, or, at any rate, penetrated at various points, the little buffer principalities between Assyria and the powerful kingdoms of Babylon, Damascus, and Urartu; but he had avoided engaging any one of these three great states in a struggle of which the issue seemed doubtful. Shalmaneser could not maintain this policy of forbearance without loss of prestige in the eyes of the world: conduct which might seem prudent and cautious in a victorious monarch like Assur-nazir-pal would in him have argued timidity or weakness, and his rivals would soon have provoked a quarrel if they thought him lacking in the courage or the means to attack them. Immediately after his accession, therefore, he assumed the offensive, and decided to measure his strength first against Urartu, which for some years past had been showing signs of restlessness. Few countries are more rugged or better adapted for defence than that in which his armies were about to take the field. The volcanoes to which it owed its configuration in geological times, had become extinct long before the appearance of man, but the surface of the ground still bears evidence of their former activity; layers of basaltic rock, beds of scorias and cinders, streams of half-disintegrated mud and lava, and more or less perfect cones, meet the eye at every turn. Subterranean disturbances have not entirely ceased even now, for certain craters--that of Tandurek, for example--sometimes exhale acid fumes; while hot springs exist in the neighbourhood, from which steaming waters escape in cascades to the valley, and earthquakes and strange subterranean noises are not unknown. The backbone of these Armenian mountains joins towards the south the line of the Grordyasan range; it runs in a succession of zigzags from south-east to northwest, meeting at length the mountains of Pontus and the last spurs of the Caucasus. [Illustration: 079.jpg THE TWO PEAKS OF MOUNT ARARAT] Drawn by Boudier, from a photograph by A. Tissandier.