Sir James Bryce, a noted British scholar and traveler of the mid-nineteenth century, conducted extensive library research concerning the Ark. He became convinced that the Ark was preserved on Mount Ararat. Finally, in 1876, he climbed Ararat and found, at the 13,000-foot level (2,000 feet above the timberline), a piece of hand-tooled wood, four feet long, that he believed might be from the Ark.