the father of all the greater and lesser gods, the author of the human race, chaos, and the seed of the world. Some curious traditions prevailed among the ancient Assyrians and Persians respecting the Deluge. The orthodox among the latter maintained its universality, though there were some who limited it to the confines of Assyria and Persia, and others among the Magi who denied it altogether. Zoroaster taught that there would have been no Deluge, nor would the world have been drowned, if it had not been for the iniquity and impiety of a wicked personage named Malcus. Some of them believed the Deluge broke out from an oven belonging to a woman named Zala-Capha; others that the waters gushed from the mountain near which Noah dwelt.

It may be here observed, that annually on the 21st of March the Persians celebrate their most joyous festival, called the feast of the Nouroose, or the commencement of the new year, the institution of which is ascribed to Jemsheed, who, according to the traditions of the country, was the fourth sovereign of Persia, and the sixth in descent from Noah. The Persians allege that this prince gave them their best laws, originated their most useful arts, and founded their most celebrated cities; but they obscure his real history by such a confusion of events which happened to different individuals, that it is impossible to rectify the errors of bewildered memories, or attempt to reconcile fragments of former annals preserved solely by tradition. The feast, according to the Persian poets, was ordered to continue six days, as it is still celebrated in Persia with great demonstrations of joy. Sir R. K. Porter was present on one of those occasions, and describes the ceremonies at considerable length in his interesting volumes; but his reflections on this annual Persian demonstration are more suitable to our present purpose. "In the festival itself, which is on all sides acknowledged to be of so ancient a celebration that tradition must go back to

the Patriarchal ages for its institution, and from its being made near the very spot whence the descent from the Ark was made, I must own that I see sufficient evidence to admit the probability that it even originated with, or rather was appointed by, the venerable Antediluvian Patriarch himself. In this light it may be an interesting subject to all mankind, as a memorial of the creation of the world in six days-of the first spring to man-of the general equality of his race, excepting the filial homage due to its paternal head, who, before the Flood, might at the great anniversary of the world's birth have thus called the fathers of the families of the earth together, to remind them whence they sprung. In such a case, there can be no doubt that Noah would receive the sacred ordinance in a direct line from Adam; and after his descent from the Ark, which took place at the same vernal season of the year, when the world seemed created afresh from the destruction of the Deluge, and mankind were to spring again as well as the earth, it does not appear unlikely that, in reestablishing the ancient usage, he would cause it to be considered in a double view,

that of commemorating two such similar events as the creation of the world and its restoration. Indeed, some writers call the Nouroose the feast of the waters, which bears well upon the idea of its having been a memorial of the Deluge. Similar traces of commemorating the same event-some signal calamity having befallen the world, and its as extraordinary recovery to newness of life—may be generally found in the customs of all nations."

The celebrated deluge of Deucalion, current among the Greeks and Romans, has an undoubted reference to that of Noah, who is introduced under that name, and forms a prominent feature in the mythology. Deucalion was the son of Prometheus, and married Pyrrha, the daughter of his uncle Epimethrus. In his age Jupiter, irritated at the increased impiety of mankind, resolved to destroy the human race, and brought an immense flood

of waters for the purpose. The astonished inhabitants climbed the highest mountains for safety, but even these were overtopped by the rising waters, and all chance of escape from the calamity was cut off. Deucalion and his wife were saved in a ship, which, after being tossed about for some days, rested on the top of Mount Parnassus. The world was afterwards peopled by Deucalion and Pyrrha throwing stones behind them, those thrown by the former becoming men, and those by the latter women. This deluge, the scene of which is laid in Greece by the mythologists, is said to have happened B.C. 1503, but it is easy to trace its origin after divesting it of its fabulous embellishments. Lucian gives a more minute account of it, which differs in some particulars from the ordinary traditions. "I have heard in Greece," he says, "what the Greeks say concerning this Deucalion. The present race of men, they say, is not the first, for they totally perished, but is of a second generation, who, being descended from Deucalion, increased to a great multitude. Of those former men they relate this story-they were insolent, and addicted to unjust actions; they neither regarded oaths, nor were hospitable to strangers, nor listened to suppliants, and this wickedness was the cause of their destruction. On a sudden the earth poured forth a vast quantity of water, great showers fell, the rivers overflowed, and the sea rose to a prodigious height; all things became water, and all men were destroyed; only Deucalion was left for a second race of men, on account of his prudence and piety. He was saved in this manner: he went into a large ark or chest, with his sons and their wives, and when he was within, there entered swine, horses, lions, serpents, and all other creatures which live on earth by pairs. He received them all, and they did him no hurt, for the gods created a friendship among them, so that they sailed all in one chest while the waters prevailed." The same legend was received by the Romans. Many of their historians and

poets mention one universal Deluge; and it is remarkable that Ovid, in the First Book of the Metamorphoses, affirming that it was his intention to record some particular circumstances connected with the history of man from the beginning, proceeds through the several ages of the world to the time of the Deluge, the cause and manner of which he minutely describes. After relating the impiety and wickedness which reigned on the earth during the iron age, and the wars of the giants against Jupiter, which agrees with the Scripture account of the giants-those rebels to the Divine will who were before the Flood, and to their children, who are described as being worse than the fathers, Gen. vi. 1-5-the Latin poet proceeds, as he is rendered by Dryden, to make Jupiter utter the de

nunciation

"Mankind's a monster, and th' ungodly times,
Confederate into guilt, are sworn to crimes ;

All are alike involv'd in ill, and all
Must by the same relentless fury fall."

This corresponds with the narrative of the inspired historian: "And God looked upon the earth, and behold it was corrupt, for all flesh had corrupted his way upon the earth," Gen. vi. 12. The reader may perceive many striking coincidences between sacred and profane history in what follows.

"Thus ended he: the greater gods assent,
By clamours urging his severe intent ;
The less fill up the cry for punishment.
Yet still with pity they remember man,
And mourn as much as heavenly spirits can.

-But Jove

Concludes to pour a watery deluge down,
And what he durst not burn resolves to drown.
The northern breath that freezes blood he binds,
With all the race of cloud-dispelling winds.
The south he loosed, who night and horror brings,
And fogs are shaken from his flaggy wings.
With rain his robe and heaving mantle flow,
And lazy mists are lowering on his brow.
The skies from pole to pole with peals resound,
And showers enlarg'd come pouring on the ground.
Nor from his patrimonial heaven alone
Is Jove content to pour his vengeance down,

But from his brother of the seas he craves

To help him with auxiliary waves.
The watery tyrant calls his brooks and floods,
Who roll from mossy caves-their moist abodes.
The floods, by nature enemies to land,
And proudly swelling with their new command,

Remove the living stones that stopp'd their way,
And gushing from their source augment the sea.
Then with his mace their monarch struck the ground,
With inward trembling earth receiv'd the wound,
And rising streams a ready passage found.
Th' expanded waters gather on the plain,
They float the fields, and overtop the grain.
Then rushing onwards with a sweeping sway,
Bear flocks, and folds, and labouring hinds away.
Nor safe their dwellings were, for sapp'd by floods,
Their houses fell upon their household gods.
The solid piles, too strongly built to fall,
High o'er their heads behold a watery wall.
Now seas and earth were in confusion lost,
A world of waters, and without a coast.
The most of mortals perish in the flood;
The small remainder die for want of food.

A mountain of stupendous height there stands
Betwixt th' Athenian and Boeotian lands;
Parnassus is its name, whose forky rise
Mounts thro' the clouds, and mates the lofty skies.
High on the summit of this dubious cliff,
Deucalion, wafting, moored his little skiff.
He with his wife were only left behind
Of perish'd man; they two were human kind.
The mountain Nymphs and Themis they adore,
And from her oracles relief implore.
The most upright of mortal men was he,
The most sincere and holy woman she.

When Jupiter, surveying earth from high,
Beheld it in a lake of water lie;

That where so many millions lately liv'd,
But two, the best of either sex, surviv'd—
He loos'd the northern wind: fierce Boreas flies,
To puff away the clouds and purge the skies
Serenely while he blows, the vapours driv'n,
Discover Heaven to Earth, and Earth to Heaven."

Is it possible that Ovid could have invented the great events described in this fine passage, which so admirably corresponds with the brief notice of it in the Mosaic writings? Or rather are we not entitled to conclude with the following justly-expressed opinion, "Let the ingenuity of unbelief first account satisfactorily for this universal agreement of the Pagan world, and she may then, with a greater degree of plausibility, impeach the truth of the scriptural narrative of the Deluge?" It ought not to be forgotten that the Stoics, who believed alternate destructions of the earth by fire and water, never doubted the possibility of a general deluge. "There are vast lakes," says Seneca, "which we do not see: great part of the ocean lies hidden, and many rivers glide in secret, so that there may be causes of a deluge on all sides; when some waters flow in under the earth, others flow round about it, and, being long pent up, overwhelm it. And as our

bodies sometimes dissolve into sweat, so the earth shall melt, and, without the help of other causes, shall find in itself what shall drown it; there being in all places, both openly and secretly, from above and from beneath, an eruption of waters ready to overthrow and destroy it."

The Hindoo tradition of the universal deluge is contained in an ancient poem entitled " Bhagavat," and Sir William Jones gives an abridgement of it which establishes its identity with the account by the Hebrew historian. In the reign of the seventh Menu, surnamed Vaivaswata, or Child of the Sun, the Hindoos believe the earth to have been completely inundated, and the whole human race destroyed by a flood, except that pious prince himself, and the seven Rishis, or Holy Persons, and their wives, for they suppose his children to have been born after the deluge. "The demon Hayagriva," says Sir William Jones in his translation, "having purloined the vedas from the custody of Brahma while he was reposing, the whole race of men became corrupt, except the seven Rishis and Satyavrata, who then reigned in Dravira, a maritime region to the south of Carnata. This prince was performing his ablutions in the river Critimala, when Vishnu appeared to him in the shape of a small fish, and after several augmentations of bulk in different waters, was placed by Satyavrata in the ocean, where he thus addressed his amazed votary: In seven days all creatures who have offended me shall be destroyed by a deluge, but thou shalt be secured in a spacious vessel miraculously formed. Take, therefore, all kinds of medicinal herbs and esculent grain for food, and, together with the seven holy men, your respective wives, and pairs of all animals, enter the ark without fear. There shalt thou know God face to face, and all thy questions shall be answered.' Saying this he disappeared, and after seven days the ocean began to overflow the coasts, and the earth to be flooded by constant showers, when Satyavrata, meditating on the Deity, saw a large vessel moving on

the waters. He entered it, having in all respects conformed to the instructions of Vishnu, who in the form of a vast fish suffered the vessel to be tied with a great sea-serpent, as with a cable, to his measureless horn. When the deluge ceased, Vishnu slew the demon, and recovered the vedas, instructed Satyavrata in divine knowledge, and appointed him the seventh Menu by the name of Vaivaswata." This old tradition of the Deluge is also alluded to in an ode by an Indian lyric poet named Jayadeva: "Thou recoverest the veda in the water of the ocean of destruction, placing it joyfully in the bosom of an ark, fabricated by thee, O Cesava, assuming the body of a fish! Be victorious, O Heri, Lord of the universe!"

An essay printed in the Asiatic Researches on Mount Caucasus, written by Captain Francis Wilford, contains some curious notices of the great deluge. The famous peak of Chacsa-ghar, called by the Mussulmans Tuct-Sulieman, or the Throne of Solomon, is always covered with snow, in the midst of which are seen several streaks of a reddish hue, supposed by pilgrims to be the marks or impressions made by the feet of the dove which Noah let out of the Ark, "for it is the general and uniform tradition of that country that Noah built the Ark there, and there embarked in it ; and that when the flood assuaged, the summit of it first appeared above the waters, and was the resting-place of the dove, which left the impression of her feet in the mud, which in time was hardened to a rock." "The Pauranics also insist that as it is declared in their sacred books that Satyavrata made fast the ark to the famous peak, designated from that circumstance Nau-banda, with a cable of a prodigious length, he must have built it in the adjacent country. Nau, a ship, and bandha, to make fast, is the name of a famous peak situated in Cashmire. This place is resorted to by pilgrims from all parts of India, who scramble among the rocks to a cavern, beyond which they never go. A few doves,

frightened with the noise, fly from rock to rock: these the pilgrims imagine are their guides to the holy place, and believe that they are the genuine offspring of the dove which Noah let out of the Ark." Captain Wilford narrates another legend extracted from the Puranas, in which, however, nothing is mentioned of Satyavrata letting out the dove. "Satyavrata having thus built the ark, and the flood increasing, it was made fast to the peak, of Nau-bandha with a cable of prodigious length. During the flood, Brahma, or the creating power, was asleep at the bottom of the abyss: the generative power of nature, both male and female, were reduced to the simplest elements. In this manner they were wafted over the deep under the care and protection of Vishnu. When the waters had retired, the female power of nature appeared immediately in the character of the dove, and she was soon joined by her husband, named Capoteswara." It is also related that Buddha, the offspring of the moon, married Ila, whose father Noah had been preserved in a miraculous ark from an universal deluge.

It is remarkable, as illustrative of the Mosaic account of the Deluge, that the raven and the dove are considered sacred birds in India, as in other parts of the world, the former being reckoned a bird of evil presage ever since the bad tidings which it brought when Noah sent it forth to ascertain the state of the waters; while the peaceful dove, returning with the olive branch, thus conveying the intelligence that the waters of the deep were assuaged, has on the contrary always been regarded as a bird of happy omen, and caressed as the favourite of man. Both the dove and the raven have from the most ancient times enjoyed an elevated station in the skies, and on earth they have conferred their names on sacred characters. Hesyhius tells us that the priestesses who uttered the oracular responses at Dodoni were called Peleiai, or Columbæ, while the priests of Egypt are denominated Corvi by Curtius, and Kogaxes by Plutarch. The following

Hindoo tradition, related by Mr Maurice in his "History of Hindostan," is curious and important:-"When a certain Rajah wished to fix upon a proper site for the erection of a great city, he sent a learned Brahmin to explore the spot, and the Brahmin arriving on the coast of Orissa, saw a raven or crow dive into the water, which, after having washed its body, made obeisance to the sea. The Brahmin, we are told, was astonished at the sight, and as he was acquainted with the language of birds, he asked the raven the reason of this strange procedure. The raven answered him in these very remarkable words: 'I was formerly of the tribe of Dewtah, or Celestials, but by the curse of a religious man was transformed into this shape.'" Plutarch expressly informs us that during Deucalion's deluge a dove was let out of the ark to ascertain if the waters had abated:-" They say that a dove, dismissed from the ark (hagvaxos) to be an indication to Deucalion whether it had become fine weather, flew back to him while in it."

Among the Chinese, we are assured, on the high authority of Sir William Jones, there exist various traditions respecting the Flood. It is well known that they pretend to derive their origin from Noah himself, whom they call Fo-hi, whose mother their mythology alleged was the Daughter of Heaven, surnamed Flowerloving; and as the nymph was walking alone on the bank of a river with a similar name, she was suddenly encircled by a rainbow, and, becoming pregnant at the end of twelve years, was delivered of a son who was designated Star of the Year. "Although," says Sir William Jones, "I cannot insist with confidence that the rainbow of the Chinese fable alludes to the Mosaic narrative of the Flood, nor build any solid argument on the divine personage Niu-ha, of whose character and even of whose sex the historians of China speak very doubtfully, I may nevertheless assure you, after full inquiry and consideration, that the Chinese, like the Hindoos, believe this earth to have been wholly covered with water, which

Their

in works of undisputed authority they describe as flowing abundantly, then subsiding, and separating the higher from the lower age of mankind." The Chinese literature, in short, contains several notices of the universal Deluge; and the history of China alleged to have been written by their great legislator Confucius opens with a representation of their country being still under the effect of the waters. most ancient sovereign acknowledged by Confucius, named Yao (Noah), is represented as abruptly saying to his associates, "Alas! the deluging waters are spreading destruction. They surround the mountains, they overtop the hills; they rise high, and extend wide as the spacious vault of heaven." The other Chinese sect, designated the Tao-see, speak of a Deluge under Niu-hoa, whom they make a female. "Niu-hoa conquered the waters by wood, and made a vessel fit for a long course." The seasons, we are told, were then changed, mighty waters overspread the universe, and men were reduced to the condition of fishes. Another Chinese authority asserts that "the waters overwhelmed the animals and all habitations;" and a third alleges that "under Yao the Empire was not yet formed, the stagnant waters of the Deluge still covered the plains, and what was not under water was covered with trees." Kotzebue found a legend of the Deluge preserved among the rude Pagans of Kamschatka at the very extremity of the Asian continent. "They have a tradition," he says, in his Description of his Second Voyage round the World, "of an universal deluge, and to this day point out the spot on a lofty mountain where Kutka is said to have stepped out of a boat, and peopled the world with human beings."

Little is known of the ancient history of the African tribes, but in one of them the tradition of a deluge has been ascertained to be preserved. These are the Magagines of Darhia, a few miles southwest of Darfour, who believe that in the early times a great flood covered the earth and destroyed all the human race. They appear to know nothing respecting