Abstract
An Ascent of the Peak of Demawund AT a meeting of the Royal Geographical Society held on January 8, 1838, extracts were read from three communications. One of these was an account of an ascent of the peak of Demawund in September 1837 by Taylor Thomson, the paper being presented by W. F. Ainsworth (1807–96), who had been surgeon and geologist to the Euphrates expedition of Colonel Chesney. The mountain, it was stated, was about 40 miles east-north-east of Teheran and previously there had been no account of its ascent by a European or any measurement of its height. Thomson left Teiheran on September 4, and after obtaining guides at a village, ascended to the summit on September 9 and spent the night there in a cave which was heated to upwards of 76° F. by the sulphurous vapour which issued from the rocks. The geological formation of the mountain, from Gernah upwards for about 1,000 feet seemed, said Thomson, to be a bed of sandstone of the coal formation, with one seam of coal; above this limestone occurred with a thickness of about 1,200 feet, then came greenstone coloured with iron to within 100 ft. of the summit, which was a deposit of pure sulphur. "The geological results of this expedition,"said Ainsworth, “possess great interest by establishing the existence of a pseudo-volcano in these central districts of Western Asia, and ally themselves with the observations which Baron Humboldt has made upon the evidences of volcanic action, which he has traced everywhere on the great continent of Asia. It is A remarkable fact that throughout those districts of Taurus, Amanus, Kurdistan and the Persian Apennines, in which I have travelled, I have never yet met with rocks of the secondary series. The absence of every member between the chalk and the primary formations is one of the most remarkable features in the geology of Western Asia.”
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Science News a Century Ago. Nature 141, 89–90 (1938). https://doi.org/10.1038/141089b0
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/141089b0