[144] {294}[Byron's knowledge of Mount Ararat was probably derived from the following passage in Tournefort: "It is a most frightful sight; David might well say such sort of places show the grandeur of the Lord. One can't but tremble to behold it; and to look on the horrible precipices ever so little will make the head turn round. The noise made by a vast number of crows [hence the 'rushing sound,' _vide post_, p. 295], who are continually flying from one side to the other, has something in it very frightful. To form any idea of this place you must imagine one of the highest mountains in the world opening its bosom, only to show the most horrible spectacle that can be thought of. All the precipices are perpendicular, and the extremities are rough and blackish, as if a smoke came out of the sides and smutted them."--_A Voyage in the Levant_, by M. [Joseph Pitton de] Tournefort, 1741, iii. 205, 206. Kitto also describes this "vast chasm," which contained "an enormous mass of ice, which seems to have fallen from a cliff that overhangs the ice" (_Travels in Persia_, 1846, i. 34); but Professor Friedrich Parrot, who was the first to ascend Mount Ararat, does not enlarge upon the "abyss" or chasm.--_Journey to Ararat_, translated by W. D. Cowley, 1845, p. 134.] [145] [Compare the description of the "roots like snakes," which "wind out from rock and sand," in the scene on the Hartz Mountains in Goethe's _Faust_.] [146] {296} [Medwin (_Conversations_, 1824, p. 233) compares the laughter of the fiends in the cave of Caucasus with the snoring of the Furies in the _Eumenides_ of Æschylus-- Ῥέγκουσι δ' oὐ πλατοῖσι φυσιάμασιν [R(e/gkousi d' ou) platoi~si physia/masin] (line 53). ("Their snoring nostrils blow fearsome breath.") There is a closer parallel with-- Γελᾶ δὲ δαίμων ἐπ' ἀνδρὶ θερμῶ [Gela~ de\ dai/môn e)p' a)ndri\ thermô~] (line 560). ("The spirit mocketh the headlong soul.")] [147] {297}[Matthew Arnold, _Poetry of Byron_, 1881, xiv., xv., quotes this line in proof of Byron's barbarian insensibility, "to the true artist's fine passion for the correct use and consummate management of words."] [148] {300} "[And] there were giants in the earth in those days; and ... after, ... mighty men, which were of old, men of renown."--_Genesis_ [vi. 4]. [149] "The same day were all the fountains of the great deep broken up, and the windows of heaven were opened."--_Genesis_ [vii. II]. [150] {301}[Byron falls in with the popular theory as to the existence of fossil remains of marine animals at a height above the level of the sea. The "deluge" accounted for what was otherwise inexplicable.] [151] {302} The book of Enoch, preserved by the Ethiopians, is said by them to be anterior to the flood.