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any explanatory observations: suffice it to say, that strong indeed must have been the recollections of the deluge, when its leading facts are thus systematically embodied in the popular mythology of every pagan

nation.

Now whence could such an universal belief in a general deluge have arisen, if no such catastrophe had ever really happened? It is utterly incredible, that all mankind should have agreed in attesting the circumstance, if the circumstance itself had never occurred. This universal attestation then, on every principle of historical evidence, I shall venture once more to denominate a proof of the alleged fact: for it is a proof, which can never be invalidated by any rational process of discussion.

2. The only plausible objection or rather difficulty which could be fairly started, would be this: If an event of such terrific magnitude as the general deluge ever really took place, it must have left indelible marks of its ravages upon the coats of the earth. Hence, if no such marks can be traced, the language of nature contradicts the language of historical tradition and the former, involving as it does naked tangible facts, must certainly be deemed more cogent than the latter.

(1.) Of this objection, did truth allow it to be started, I would readily acknowledge the force: but, in reality, the language of nature, as deciphered by our best physiologists, instead of contradicting, perfectly agrees with the language of universal historical

tradition.

I am of opinion, says Mr. Cuvier, with Mr. de Luc and Mr. Dolomieu, that, if there is any circumstance thoroughly established in geology, it is, that the crust of our globe has been subjected to a great and sudden revolution, the epoch of which cannot be dated much farther back than five or six thousand years; that this revolution had buried all the countries, which were before

inhabited by men and by the other animals, that are now best known; that the small number of individuals of men and other animals, that escaped from the effects of that great revolution, have since propagated and spread over the lands then newly laid dry; and, consequently, that the human race has only resumed a progressive state of improvement since that epoch, by forming established societies, raising monuments, collecting natural facts, and constructing systems of science and learning.*

The surface of the earth, which is inhabited by man, says Mr. Parkinson, displays, even at the present day, manifest and decided marks of the mechanical agency of violent currents of water. Nor is there a single stratum that does not exhibit undeniable proofs of its having been broken, and even dislocated, by some tremendous power, which has acted with considerable violence on this planet, since the deposition of the strata of even the latest formation.†

(2.) Thus strongly does the very texture of the globe proclaim the occurrence of a great diluvian revolution, which overwhelmed a former race of men and animals, and from the effects of which only a small number of each escaped: nor does it less distinctly proclaim, that the revolution itself must have occurred at a comparatively recent era. Moses, according to the chronological numbers of the Hebrew Pentateuch, places it 4171 years anterior to the present day; or, according to what I deem the preferable chronological numbers of the Samaritan Pentateuch, 4761 years anterior to the same time: Mr. Cuvier, drawing his inference from the observation of actual phenomena, pronounces, that its epoch cannot be dated much farther back than five or six thousand years.

The train of reasoning, through which he arrives

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Essay on the theory of the earth. § 84. p. 173, 174. 4th edit.
Organic Remains of a former world, vol. iii. p. 454.

I write in the year 1823.

at such a conclusion, is singularly curious and interesting.

By a careful investigation, says he, of what has taken place on the surface of the globe, since it has been laid dry for the last time, and since its continents have assumed their present form (at least in such parts as are somewhat elevated above the level of the ocean,) it may be clearly seen, that this last revolution, and consequently the establishment of our existing societies, could not have ben very ancient. This result is one

of the best established and least attended to, in rational zoology and it is so much the more valuable, as it connects natural and civil history together in one uninterrupted series.

It

When we endeavour to estimate the quantity of effects, produced in a given time by any causes still acting, by comparing them with the effects which these causes have produced since they began to operate, we may determine nearly the period at which their action commenced: which must necessarily be the same period, with that in which our contin nts assumed their present existing forms, or with that of the last retreat of the waters. must have been since that last retreat of the waters, that the acclivities of our mountains have begun to disintegrate and to form slopes or taluses of the debris at their bottoms and upon their sides; that our rivers have begun to flow in their present courses and to form alluvial depositions; that our existing vegetation has begun to extend itself and to form vegetable soil; that our present cliffs or sleep sloping coasts have begun to be worn away by the waters of the sea; that our actual downs or sandhills have begun to be blown away by the winds: and, dating from the same poch, colonies of the human race must have then begun, for the first or for the second time, to spread themselves and to form new establishments in places fitted by nature for their reception.

De Luc and Dolomieu have most carefully examined the progress of the formation of new grounds by the col

lection of slime and sand washed down by the rivers ; and, although exceedingly opposed to each other on many points of the theory of the earth, they agree exactly on this. These formations augment very rapidly; they must have increased with the greatest rapidity at first, when the mountains furnished the greatest quantity of materials to the rivers; and yet their extent still continues to be extremely limited.

The memoir by Mr. Dolomieu, respecting Egypt, tends to prove that the tongue of land, on which Alexander caused his famous commercial city to be built, did not exist in the days of Homer: because they were then able to navigate directly from the island of Pharos into the gulf, afterwards called Lacus Mareotis; and this gulf, as indicated by Menelaus, was between fifteen and twenty leagues in length. Supposing this to be accurate, it has only required the lapse of nine hundred years, from the days of Homer to the time of Strabo, to bring matters to the situation described by the latter author, when that gulf was reduced to the state of a lake only six leagues long.

It is a more certain fact, that, since that time, a still greater change has taken place. The sands which have been thrown up by the sea and the winds, have formed between the isle of Pharos and the site of ancient Alexandria, an isthmus more than four hundred yards broad, on which the modern city is now built. These collec

tions of sand have also blocked up the nearest mouth of the Nile, and have reduced the lake Mareotis almost to nothing; while, in the course of the same period, the Nile has deposited alluvial formations all along the rest of the coast. In the time of Herodotus, the coast of the Delta extended in a straight line, and is even represented in that direction in the maps constructed for the geography of Ptolemy: but, since then, the coast has so far advanced as to have assumed a semicircular projection into the Mediterranean.

We may learn in Holland and Italy, how rapidly the

Rhine, the Po, and the Arno, since they have been confined within dikes, now elevate their beds, and push forward the alluvial grounds at their mouths toward the sea, forming long projecting promontories at their sides; and it may be concluded from this assured fact, that these rivers have not required the lapse of many centuries to deposite the low alluvial plains through which they now flow.

Many cities, which were flourishing sea-ports in wellknown periods of history, are now several leagues inland; and some have even been ruined by this change. The inhabitants of Venice at present find it exceedingly difficult to preserve the lagunes, by which that once celebrated city is separated from the continent of Italy, from filling up: and there can be no doubt, that she will some day become united to the main land, in spite of every effort to preserve her insular situation.

"We learn from Strabo, that Ravenna stood among lagunes, in the time of Augustus, as Venice does now but Ravenna is at present a league distant from the sea. Spina had been originally built by the Greeks on the sea-coast: but, in the time of Strabo, the sea was removed to the distance of ninety stadia. This city has been long since destroyed. Adria, which gave name to the Adriatic, was, somewhat more than twenty centuries ago, the chief port of that sea, from which it is now at the distance of six leagues. The Abbe Fortis has even produced strong evidence for believing, that the Euganean hills may have been islands at a period somewhat more remote.

"Mr. de Prony, having been directed by the French government to examine and report upon the precautions which might be employed for preventing the devastations occasioned by the floods of the Po, ascertained that this river has so greatly raised the level of its bottom since it was shut in by dykes, that its present surface is higher than the roofs of the houses in Ferrara. At the same time, the alluvial additions produced by this river have advanced so

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