ITS COMMENCEMENT AND PROGRESS. 475 to the hand of the potter, or inert, passive, and therefore quite undeserving of reproach. The period of the deluge is fixed by the best chronologists in the year 1656 from the creation, corresponding to the year-2348 of the Christian era. According to Blair, "On the 10th day of the second month which was on Sunday, Nov. 30th,2347, God commanded Noah to enter into the ark with his family; and the next Sunday, Dec. 7th, it began to rain, and rained 40 days, and the deluge continued 150 days. On Wednesday, May 6th, —2348, the ark rested on Mount Ararat. The tops of the mountains became visible on Sunday, July 19th, and on Friday, Nov. 18th, Noah came forth out of the ark with all that were with him." When the barriers of the ocean began to give way before the explosive forces, the waters would invade the shores, and spread over the sunken land,* augmenting prodigiously the evaporating surface, and thus bringing the atmosphere to the dew point, a state of saturation to which, previously, it could seldom, and in few places attain, on account of the area of the dry ground being great relative to that of the sea. From this cause, as well as from the immense quantity of vapours which are known to rise from craters into the higher and cooler regions of the air at the period of eruptions, an immense formation of cloud and deposition of rain would ensue.t The volcanic mountain of Pic in the Moluccas, which was visible more than 30 miles off at sea, entirely disappeared amidst a violent eruption; and a lake now occupies its place.—Ordinaire, Histoire Naturelle des Volcans, ch. 22. + Ducarla, in a Memoir on Volcanic Rains and Inundations, published in the 61st vol. of the Journ. de Physique, speaking of the aqueous Many persons have ascribed to the descent of rain from some super-aerial ocean, a great part, if not the whole, of the waters which then inundated the earth. But the slightest acquaintance with the principles of meteorology, would have repressed this wild imagination. The atmosphere is merely the circulating medium through which aqueous particles are transferred from moist to dry places, according to fixed laws, developed in a former chapter of this work. Supposing it universally saturated at a temperature of 80° Fahrenheit, (which is the heat of the equatorial seas,) round an aqueous sphere, it could receive vapour merely equivalent to its dew point, amounting at the utmost to a pressure of only one inch of mercury, or 13.6 inches of water. This is all that could fall from it in its transition from moisture to absolute dryness; a quantity incapable of producing a general deluge. The formation and descent of rain constitute merely a process of distillation, in which, after the dew point has been reached in any region, evaporation stops there, unless condensation takes place in another, when a direct circulation of vapour is established through the air above, and a retrograde circulation of water on the surface below. But this circulation can never raise the ordinary level of our seas in the slightest degree. In fact, such a saturation of the atmosphere would lower the general sea level by withdrawing entirely for a season, a greater mass of water into the air than usually exists in the va vapours then raised, says, “des qú' elles sont dans l'atmosphere, elles y forment bientôt d'énormes nuages qui se résolvent en eau, et versent des déluges sur les contrées voisines." INUNDATING FLUX AND REFLUX. 477 porous state. We have no ground to suppose that tempestuous winds aggravated the horrors of the rising deluge. "The atmosphere participates very little in the agitation of volcanoes and earthquakes. It remains customarily calm. M. Von Buch when observing an eruption of Vesuvius, was surprised to see the mercury of the barometer remain perfectly steady."* At each successive upheaving of the submarine strata, the inundation would advance further on the land, drowning in their places the animals which the dismal preludes had driven for shelter into their dens; and washing away by its reflux, the tenants of the plains, into the slimy channel of the deep. By such a retiring billow in the dreadful earthquake of 1755, 3000 inhabitants of Lisbon were suddenly swept off its quay, and swamped in the bed of the Tagus. Should a revulsion ever lay that channel dry, their bones may be found buried in the alluvium. In the progress of the elevation of submarine strata and subversion of terrestrial, the stage of equilibrium would arrive, when the circumfluent waves would roll over the loftiest pinnacles of the globe. From this consummation of the cataclysm, as the new lands continued to rise, and the old to subside, mountain peaks would begin once more to appear. During the diluvial overflow, the atmosphere would remain tranquil ; for the physical causes which disturb its equilibrium-inequalities of temperature and moisture, would act feebly if at all. The universal sheet of * D'Aubuisson Geognosie, I. 195. water, quenched in fact for a time, the equatorial heats, which give origin to the trade winds and monsoons. And in extra-tropical regions, the usual struggle between the dry air incumbent over the plains, and the moist air over the sea, whence proceed the variable winds, was also at an end. Nor could the shoreless abyss itself be animated by regular currents, like those which pervade our actual seas. No American barrier stretching through two hemispheres, then received the impulsion of an ocean-stream from Africa, to deflect it through a Mexican gulf, round on European shores. The disruptive forces, would doubtless agitate the mass of waters, but would also prevent their pursuing any continuous direction. Thus the animal and vegetable productions of every region would find their places of sepulture at home; for we know of no effective power that could transport them to any considerable distance. But when the waters had so far subsided into their new basins, as to expose the mountains and table lands to the sunbeam, the atmosphere, would be set in rapid motion, and would resume its drying agency, on the new-born earth, by transferring the moisture exhaled from its intra-tropical territories, to the cold ridges of Himmala and Caucasus. Now sprung forth that great east-wind, which has ever since continued to circulate round the globe, and which as the ministering spirit of commerce, mariners love to call the trade-wind. Soon, indeed, a foreign force, would lend its impulsion to the internal causes of aerial currents. The waters in the progress of descent into their deepening channels, POWER OF DILUVIAL Deflux. 479 our still unfathomed ocean-caves, would take an accelerating pace, as do our ebbing tides when they approach their lowest level. With the increasing velocity of deflux, the air also would be hurried along, and thus conspiring elements would tear up and excavate the great diluvial valleys, which now furrow every district. of the earth, monuments equally unambiguous and enduring of the retiring cataclysm. Of the impetus of that tremendous mass of waters, the human mind can form no adequate conception. A faint idea may perhaps be acquired from contemplating the effects of some partial floods described in modern history. In 1225 the sea being raised to an unusual height by a storm of wind, inundated Holland. The Rhine at the same time swollen by extraordinary rains, and driven back by the tempest, spread its waters over the countries, around its embouchure. A calm suddenly supervened. The waters which had risen by rapid, but not disruptive steps, now began to run off with so furious a deflux, as to excavate and sweep away, an immense tract of ground, the bed of the Zuyder-zee. In 1421, at another and more sudden inundation of Holland, 100,000 of its inhabitants were drowned; a hundred villages were engulphed; and in its retreat, an ocean-channel was scooped out near Dordrecht, where that great arm of the sea called the Bies-Boos stretches. We may now understand how the granites of the upper Vivarais were torn asunder into their present frightful precipices and façades; how the gigantic obelisks of the Alps and Pyrenees were insulated from their parent |