1 261. [Gen. vi. 13.] Before we presume to decide respect ing the universality of the deluge, we should be well informed of the nature of marine fossil bodies, which are found in THE DELUGE. divers parts of the earth, and of their situation and arrange. ment. It is necessary also to be acquainted with the state of 259. (Gen. vi. 7.) And the Lord said, I will destroy those which are found actually under the sea, and the revoman whom I have created from the face of the earth ;- lutions to which they are subject, while they are covered by pot of the whole globe, but of a particular country. | it. It is still further requisite to attend to the revolutions “ That ever the whole globe was at one which have been, and are continually observed, with respect time totally overflowed with water, is physically impossible to the sea-shores, which change their situation in several The sea may have covered all parts successively one after parts, some advancing on the land, and others retiring. If the other; and this could be only in a gradation so very all these different facts be compared together, it will not be slow, as to take up a prodigious number of ages. The sea, in doubted, but there are actually under the earth marine bodies, the space of five hundred years, has withdrawn from Aigues- which are found there only in consequence of these slow revomortes, from Frejus, and from Ravenna, once large ports, lutions, and not of a universal deluge. leaving about two leagues of land quite dry. This progres Phil. Trans. Abridg. vol. xi. p. 85. sion shews, that to make the circuit of the globe, it would require two millions two hundred thousand years. A very remarkable circumstance is, that this period comes very near 262. [Gen. vii. 19.] There are a few leading facts in geoto that which the earth’s axis would take up in raising itself | logy, says Mr. BAKEWELL, which we may consider as clearly again and coinciding with the equator. A motion so far from ascertained by existing phenomena. Among these we may improbable, that for these fifty years past some apprehension enumerate, Ist, That the present continents were once colias been entertained of it ; but it cannot be accomplished vered by water. 2nd, That the strata in which organic under two millions three hundred thousand years. The strata remains occur, were formed in succession over each other. or beds of shells every where found, sisty, eighty, and 3d, That every regular stratum was once the uppermost part even a hundred leagues from the sea, prove beyond all dispute, l of the globe. that it lias insensibly deposited those maritime products on | See the concluding chapter of his Introduction to Geology. ground which was once its shores : but that the water at one and the same time covered the whole earth, is a physical absurdity, which the laws of gravitation, as well as those of 263. - In the motions of the earth as a planet, fluids, and the deficiency of the quantity of water, denon are to be discovered the superior causes which convert strate to be impossible. seas into continents, and continents into seas. VOLTAIRE. These See No. 42, sublime changes are occasioned by the progress of the perihelion point of the earth's orbit through the ecliptic, which passes from extreme northern to extreme southern declination, and vice versa, every 10,450 years ; and the 260. A considerable part of the city of Rome is maxima of the central forces in the perihelion occasion the no longer on the site of antient Rome; but at the bottom of waters to accumulate alternatively upon either hemisphere. the Tiber, or on the shoals of the Mediterranean. The remains of her innumerable population no longer lie in their During 10,450 years, the sea is therefore gradually retiring and encroaching in both hemispheres ;-hence all the vacatacombs, nor those of her emperors in their magnificent rieties of marine appearances and accumulations of marine tombs; they have been washed into the sea, and rolled to remains in particular situatious; and hence the succession of wards the fires of Vesuvius and Ætna. As to us, nations of modern date, the ocean has likewise received many a melan layers or strata, one upon another, of marine and earthy remains. The observations of those strata prove, says Sir choly contribution of the bones of those who have fallen Richard PhiLLIPS, that the periodical chauges have already in naval engagements. What masses of artillery and metallic occurred at least three times ; or, in other words, it appears treasures have sunk in the course of ages to the bottom of that the site, on which I now stand, has been three times the deep. Oh! how much more useful would be the diver's covered by the ocean, and three times has afforded an asylum bell than the balloou of the aëronaut! Boastful monuments for vegetables and animals ! of our glory are erected in our public squares, and described Morning's Walk from London to Kew, pp. 338, 339. iu the page of partial history ; but the real monuments of our euthusiasm and of our sufferings are permanently deposited in the bottom of the deep. Yet a day will arrive when, after the changes produced by the lapse of ages, they will come 264. [Gen. vi. 7.) Having examined, says the Hon. forth to view, and be displayed to the eyes of our wondering DAINES BARRINGTON with some care (and as I hope without posterity, in the same way as the remnants of elephauts, of prejudice), the three chapters of Genesis which state the erocodiles, and of the mammoth, have been exhibited to our circumstances that happened during the deluge, I cannot see own. any reasons for supposing it to have been general. St. Pierre's Harmonies of Nature, vol. ii. p.31.) Archeologia, vol. iv. p. 322. 265. (Gen. vii. 17.) The Gentoo Shasters or Scriptures, || 272. (Gen. vii. 19.) The whole extent of Egypt in length composed before or about the æra of the food, never once from Philac and the cataracts downwards, has been esteemed mention so remarkable a calamity ; and the Brahmins assert, || to have been between five and six hundred miles. It consisted that it uever took place in Hindostan. of three principal divisions, the Thebais, the Heptanomis, Halhed's Preface to Gentoo Laws, p. 38. and Delta ; and these were subdivided into smaller provinces, called by the Greeks, Nomes. Of these, according to Strabo, ten were in the Thebais, ten also in that portion called Delta, 266. - We are told, also, by an Eastern writer, aud sixteen in the intermediate rexion, which was styled EBN. Shoah, that the Persians and Indians deny the uni Heptanomis. Herodotus tells us that the country was narrow, versality of the flood. as it extended from the confines of Ethiopia downwards, till Univer. Hist. vol. i. p. 219. it came to the point of Lower Egypt, where stood a place called Cercasorum, by Strabo Cercesura. All the way to this place the river Nile ran for the most part in one channel; and 267. (Gen. vii. 11.) Linnæus, in his System of Nature, the region was bounded on one side by the mountains of Lybia, says that he could find no certain marks of a deluge any and on the other, which was to the east, by the mountains where ; his words are, “ Cataclysmi universalis certa rudera of Arabia. As the latter consisted of one prolonged ridge, Herodotus speaks of them in the singular, as one mountain ; ego nondum attigi, quousque penetravi.” and says that it reached no further than Lower Egypt, and See also Joseph. Contra Apion, b.ji, the first division of the Nile, which was nearly opposite to the where he speaks of Berosus. Pyramids. Here the river was severed into two additional streams, the Pelusiac and the Canobic, which bounded Lower Egypt, called Delta, to the east and to the west, while 268. [Gen. vii. 2.) It appears there are 100 species of the original streain, called the Sebennetic, pursued its course quadrupeds, ab-original of America. Mons. De Buffon sup downward, and after having sent ont some other branches, poses about double that number exist on the whole earth. at last entered the Mediterranean Sea. (Bryant.)- AcOf these Europe, Asia, and Africa furnish (suppose) 126 ; cording to HERODOTUS, the seven branches of the Nile, that is, the 26 common to Europe and America, and about from east to west, are the Pelusian, the Mendesian, the 100 which are not in America at all. Bucolic, the Sebennitic, the Sactic, the Bolbitine, and the JEFFERSON's Notes on the state of Virginia, p. 94. | Canopic. Euterpe, xvii. 269. — Not a single animal of the torrid zone is common to the old world and to the new. To which we may add, that none of the domestic animals of Europe were found 273. -- The sources of the Nile were so absolutely in America when it was first discovered. unknown to the antients, that they supposed it impossible to White's Regular Grudation in Man, p. 38. (liscover them; though they are now well known to be in Upper Ethiopia. It is said to proceed from two springs, distant from each other about twenty paces. It enters Egypt almost under the tropic of Cancer, precipitating itself over seven 270. [Gen. vi. 19, 20.] How could the unknown kinds of successive falls or cataracts-denoted, probably, in Genesis serpents in Brazil, the slow-bellied creatures of the Indies, (vii. 11.), by the fiood gates of heaven. The Arabs and and all those strange species of anjinals seen in the West other Orientals often give it the name of a sea, because of Indies, either come into the ark, or be conveyed out of it into its immense overflowing: those countries, which are divided from the continent where See CALMET. Noah was, by so vast an ocean on one side, and at least so large a track of land on the other? How could those animals subsist, which cannot live out of their native climate? And, after the flood was over, how for instance, could the Animals proper to America return to their native country ? Wo con 274. [Gen. vii. 12.] “ Though many subtle reasons sess, say the writers of the Univer. Hist., we cannot tell. were formerly invented to account for the great increase of See vol. i. pp. 212, 213. | the Nile, it is now'universally acknowledged to be entirely owing to the heavy rains which fall in Ethiopia” ;--aug mented enormously, at the time of this flood, by the rain 271. [Gen. vii. 11.) Egypt, a kind of valley through which undoubtedly fell in Egypt also.--" The air is generally which the Nile flows, is 500 miles in length; and is bounded dry, in the upper part of the kingdom; yet some refreshing on the North-west by the Mediterranean, on the east by the dews descend for several months after the swelling of the Red Sea and the isthmus of Suez, on the south by Nubia and Nile, and rain is frequently seen in Lower Egypt during the Abyssinia, and on the west by Barca. winter.” Joyce's Introduction to the Sciences, p. 73. Maror 275. [Gen. vii. 11.) Whene'er the Lion sheds his fires around, Lucan, translated by Rowe Red Sea, at high-water of spring-tides at Suez, is more elevated than the surface of the Mediterranean, taken at low water of spring-tides at Tineh, the antient Pelusium, by three feet English. From the same anthority, it also appeared, tiat the waters of the Red Sea might overflow the Delta ; and that therefore there was ground for the apprehensions entertained by the Antients and the Moderns respecting the opening of a canal, or other communication, between the Mediterranean and the Red Sea, as if thereby Egypt and other countries, on both sides of the Mediterranean, would be inundated and overwhelmed. Month. Mag. for May, 1814, p. 301. 276. - In the heart of Ethiopia, it rains much 282. The Mediterranean, originally a fresh during two of the hottest months of the summer; at the water reservoir, filling unusually by the flood, would very time when it rains in the Indies, and when the Nile over necessarily give back its waters till Egypt might be comflows in Egypt. BERNIER.-See Pinkerton's Coll. of Voy. pletely overwhelmed.--The Arabic Geographer, Christand Trav. part xxxii. p. 230. MANNUS, positively affirms, that in after ages Alexander was the man by whose appointment and design the Isthmus Gadi. tanus being cut out, the Atlantic Ocean was thereby let into the Mediterranean, and a strait formed which is now called 277. [Gen. viii. 1.) Before the overflowing of the Nile in in the Strait of Gibraltar. Egypt, an Etesian (or Annual) northerly wivd drives those See Geographus Arab., 1 par. cl. 4. And vapors towards the south, which covering Ethiopia with Dr. Gregory, de Æris et Epochis, p. 159. thick clouds, resolve into rains, and make the Nile swell all along its course. On the contrary, in September, an Annual southerly wind, blowing down the current of the Nile, promotes the draining of its waters. 283. (Gen. viii. 18.] ABYDENUS says, that the food Abbe Pluche, Hist. of the Heav, vol. i. p. 32. I began on the fifteenth day of the mouth Desius ; and that the Il place of descent from the ark was in Arinenia.---(See EUSEB. Præp. Evang. l. ix. c. 12.)—The mountain on which the ark of Noah rested, was Ararat in Armenia. 278. (Gen. vii. 11.) Fifteen cubits are recorded by the BRYANT. emperor Julian as the height of the Nile's inundation. Three hundred years afterwards the amount was no more than sixteen or seventeen. In 1702 it rose to twenty-three cubits four inches. Twenty-four cubits is the greatest height to 284. [Gen. viii. 4.] Mount Ararat, if we judge from the which it was ever known to rise. When our countryman time it took Tournefort and others to ascend to the Snow Sandy's was there it rose to tweuty-three. that covers its summit, is perhaps more elevated than any See Beloe's Note on Herod. Euterpe, v. | mountain of the New World. St. Pierre's Studies of Nature, vol. i. p. 126. 279. (Gen. vii. 20.] In our time, unless the River (Nile) swells to sixteen cubits, or fifteen at least, the country is not covered with water. (LITTLEBURY's Herodotus, vol. i. p. 285. (Gen. viii. 7.) Archimedes invented a war-instrument 144.) — And the hills were covered: The whole kingdom of to be used in seizing an enemy's ship, which consisted, says Egypt is one continued plain, which admits of but very little Plutarch, of two iron grapples or hooks, like the beaks of interruptiou from hills, rocks, or other protuberances. cranes.--This, observes Langhorne,“ was a sort of croup Perry's View of the Levant, p. 476. with two claws, fastened to a long chain, which was let down by a kind of lever.” See Plutarch's Lives, vol. ii. p. 245. The great cubit is preserved on the Nilometer, at Cairo. Sce M. Bailly's Antieni Hist. of Asia, vol.i. p. 144. 286: POLYBIUS (l. i. c. 21.) describes a naval machine, by the Romans called corvus, as grappling an enemy's ship with its iron spikes, after the manner an anchor 281. [Gen. vii. 11.] It is shewn by the French engineers | grapples the ground. employed in the expedition to Egypt, that the surface of the See Univer. Hist. vol. xii. p. 13. 280. 287. - The chevalier FOLARD has obliged the 293. (Gen. vii. 7.] The custom of making fools, the world with a learned and curious dissertation on the corvus. | consequent “ hilarity and chagrin, the disappointment and DOMINICUS MACHANÆUS iu his scholia on Cornelius Nepos, l joy, which the Englishman causes and is subject to, alterlikewise has given us a minute description of it, which is nately, on the first of April, was originally part of rites extracted chiefly from Polybius. similar to those of the Egyptian Osiris-perhaps the same. Univer. Hist. vol. xvii. p. 50. Note (M). In these rites, which probably commemorated the historical account of the deluge, the priests, attended by the people, sought the lost Osiris, or Noah, on the sea side, among the 288. [Gen. viii. 8.) Mariners, at the present day, when waters, in the night-emblematical of the period that he was about to take soundings, sometimes use the phrase, “ Throw in the ark. As they were dispersed on the shore, some one out the blue pigeon.”—If Noah had not been provided with would call out to the others that he had found the object of a Lead or Dove, how could he have known when the waters their search; and when he had collected a number of spectahad riseu fifteen cubits ? See Gen. vii. 20. tors, another would cry out that he had found him; till at last he was found IN AN ARK, and borne away with rejoicing. -If a nation, so enlightened as it is the boast of ours to be, 289. (Gen. viji. 7–9.) The application of mankind, in the so long preserve and perpetuate the landmarks of the ignoearly ages of society, to the imitative arts of painting, carving, rance of their ancestors, is it astonishing this should be the statuary, and the casting of figures in metals, seems to have case in a country (like Egypt), where even trifling customs preceded the discovery of letters ; and to have been used as a are like the laws of the Medes and Persians, which never written language to convey intelligence to their distant friends, alter, and where the ample page of knowledge, through the or to transmit to posterity the history of themselves, or of bigotry of the people, has never been unfolded ?” their discoveries. Hence the origin of the hieroglyphic Bib. Researches, vol. i. p. 99. figures which crowded the walls of the temples of antiquity; many of which may be seen in the tablet of Isis in the works of Montfaucon; and some of them are still used in the sciences 294. (Gen. vii. 11.] The Israelites began their year when of chemistry and astronomy, as the characters for the metals the sun enters the sign Aries; that is, when the day and and planets, and the figures of animals on the celestial night are equal in the spring season. Their first month Abib, globe. or Nisan, includes part of March and part of April in our Darwin's Temple of Naturc, canto i. 76. way of reckoning. In the second month, the Flood com menced, identically at the time the river Nile in Egypt begins its annual inundation; that is, in May. “ Yet no public 290. (Gen. vii. 2.] The Egyptians, says Herodotus, are notice is taken of its increase till the latter end of June, divided into seven classes. These are, the priests, the mili when it has usually risen to the height of nine or twelve feet, The public criers then begin to proclaim it through all the tary, herdsmen, swineherds, tradesmen, interpreters, and pilots. Egyptian cities, and continue to publish its daily augmouThey take their names from their professions. Enterpe, clxiv. tation till it rises to the lieight of twenty-four feet, when and all other demonstrations of public rejoicing.”-Mavor. 291. (Gen. vi. 20.] The mountaineers of Poland are de Does not our Lord allude to such Egyptian feasting, and nominated Cossacks, from the Polish term “ Cosa or Kosa, || thereby ascertain the particular country destroyed by the signifying a Goat." flood ? when He says, “ As it was in the days of Noe, so Public Prints. shall it be also in the days of the Son of Man. They did eat, they drank, they married wives, they were given in inarriage, until the day that Noe entered into the ark; and. 292. (Gen. viï. 22.] In Egypt there is a double secd the flood came, and destroyed thein all.” Luke xvii. 26, 27, time and harvest. Rice, Indian wheat, and what is called the See in particular, Amos is. 5. corn of Damascus-having a large cane and an ear like millet; are sown in March, before the Nile overflows, and reaped about October. But the barley, the flax, and the 295. (Gen. vii. 3.) That the Egyptians, like the Romans, wheat which in that country is all bearded, are sowo in called their government the world, is placed beyond a doubt November and December, as soon as the Nile has withdrawn by the version which JEROME gives of the title of Joseph. In its foods; and these are reaped before May.-Accordingly, | Gen. xli. 45, Pharaoh calls Joseph Zaphnath-Paaneah, Norden tells us that he saw there an extensive plain covered which in Egyptian signifies, says Jerome, salvatorem mundi, with Turkey-wheat, that was beginning to ripen, on the the Saviour of the world. Now what world had Joseph twentieth of November ; and that on the twenty-ninth of the saved, but the kingdom of Egypt? same month he saw the Arabs in a neighbouring plain, actu See Isai. xviii. 3. Luke ii. 1. ally cuttiug their harvest. See HARMER's Observa, vol. iv. p. 2. || the authors of the Copernican system, as well as of the doc trine of attraction; and probably the established religion of the Greeks, and the Eleusinian mysteries, were only varieties THE NOAHIC COVENANT. of the two different sects.” Forbes' Oriental Memoirs, vol. q. p. 361, [Gen. ix, 1.) And God blessed Noah, and his sons, and said to them, Bc fruitful and multiply, and replenish the carth. 298. (Gen. xi. 2.] Shinar in many respects is similar to Egypt : particularly, as it is without rain the greatest part 296. [Gen. ii. 8, 15.] The Brahmin, who disclaims all of the year; as its soil and climate are exceedingly rich and kindred with the less favoured nations of the earth, regards excellent; as its vegetable productions, its millet, sesame, his own country as the spot on which the Divinity has dis barley, and wheat, are most luxuriant; and as it is fertilized played a peculiar manifestation of his PRESENCE, as the || in being flooded naturally and artificially from the Tigris centre of terrestrial creation, and the land of virtues; and and Euphrates. Here also the palm flourishes naturally, views, with a consciousness of superior sanctity, the profes especially that of the date kind, which affords the inhabitants, sors of that faith which his own records have shewu to be as Herodotus expresses himself, meat, and wine, and honey historically true.--These records concur with the warrative of || (Matt. ii. 4.); though the vine. the olive and the fig, are not Moscs, in placing the theatre of the first memorable events among the distinguishing blessings either of this country, or thai befel the huinan race, within the limits of Iran, under of her sister Egypt. stood in its true and extended signification, between the Oxus See Univer. Hist, vol. iv. p. 226, &c, and the Euphrates, the Armenian mountains and the borders of India.-It was from this central part of the globe, that the adventurous progeny of Japhet could best transport them 299. From the northern mountains of Thibet and selves to those countries, which, on account of their being separated froin Judea by the sea, are emphatically styled in Tartary, to the southern promontory of Cape Comorin; and the Writings of Moses, the isles of the Gentiles;' in con from the western shores of the Indus to the eastern banks of tradistinction to Asia, which to Palestine was strictly conti the Ganges, extended the boundaries of the vast empire of nental. It was nearest to this quarter that the peaceful the antient Hindoos; a country comprising nearly as much descendants of Shem settled themselves in Arabia, where so land as half the continent of Europe, and containing about many of their names may now be discovered ; and it was seventy millions of inhabitants. Their simple diet (particufrom this quarter, that the Ammonian race, so famed for dar larly that of their Brahmins or priests) consists of milk, rice, fruit, and vegetables ; they abstain from ing exploits, subdued the vast and fertile countries of India, every thing that Ethiopia, and the countries situated on the Nile.--But in all cither had or could enjoy life, and use spices to Alavour the these migrations and dispersions, it will be seen, that man rice, which is their principal food; it is also enriched with was never left by his Creator without some revelation to ghee, or clarified butter. They are extremely sober, drinkdirect his steps; and what that revelation was, what pro ing only water, milk, or sherbet; they eat in the morning mises it unfolded, and what doctrines it was designed to and evening; their plates and dishes are generally formed inculcate, may be collected from the concise information from the leaf of the plantain-tree, or the nymphea lotos, that beautiful lily which abounds there in every lake. contained in the history of Moses, compared with those traditions, which are yet to be discovered in all the mytholo FORBES' Oriental Memoirs, vol. i. pp. 59, 70. gies of the Antient World. See a view of the Brahminical Religion, in Mr. first king of the Indians. This Menu was certainly the patriarch Noah, as Sir W. Jones acknowledges. 297. (Gen. viji. 4.) An ingenious writer in the Asiatic Re BARTOLON EO by Johnston, p. 303, searches asserts, apparently on well grounded authority, that from Noah and his descendants, who established themselves on the mountains of Taurus in Higher Asia, “ the Hindoo religion probably spread over the whole earth. There are 302. [Deut. xxxii. 8.] The more I saw of the Hindoos, . signs of it in every northern country, and in almost every 1 says FORBES, the more I perceived the truth of Orme's system of worship. In England it is obvious : Stone-hengereinark; that Hindostan has been inhabited from the earliest is evidently one of the temples of Boodh; and the arith- || antiquity, by a people who have no resemblance, either in inetic, astronomy, astrology; the holidays, games, names | their figure, or manners, with any of the nations contiguous of the stars, and figures of the constellations; the antient to them; and that although conquerors have established themmonuments, laws, and coins; the languages of the different selves at different times, in various parts of India, yet the nations; bear the strongest marks of the same original. | original inhabitants have lost very little of their original The Brahmins of the sect of Brahma were the true authors character. of the Ptolemaic systein ; the Boodhists, followers of Budha, Oriental Memoirs, vol. ij. p.505. |