THE DELUGE.

259. [Gen. vi. 7.] And the LORD said, I will destroy man whom I have created from the face of the earth;— not of the whole globe, but of a particular country.

"That ever the whole globe was at one time totally overflowed with water, is physically impossible The sea may have covered all parts successively one after the other; and this could be only in a gradation so very slow, as to take up a prodigious number of ages. The sea, in the space of five hundred years, has withdrawn from Aiguesmortes, from Frejus, and from Ravenna, once large ports, leaving about two leagues of land quite dry. This progression 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 to that which the earth's axis would take up in raising itself again and coinciding with the equator. A motion so far from improbable, that for these fifty years past some apprehension has been entertained of it; but it cannot be accomplished under two millions three hundred thousand years.-The strata or beds of shells every where found, sixty, eighty, and even a hundred leagues from the sea, prove beyond all dispute, that it has insensibly deposited those maritime products on 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 fluids, and the deficiency of the quantity of water, demonstrate to be impossible. See No. 42.

260.

VOLTAIRE.

A considerable part of the city of Rome is no longer on the site of antient Rome; but at the bottom of the Tiber, or on the shoals of the Mediterranean. The remains of her innumerable population no longer lie in their catacombs, nor those of her emperors in their magnificent tombs; they have been washed into the sea, and rolled towards the fires of Vesuvius and Etua. As to us, nations of modern date, the ocean has likewise received many a melancholy contribution of the bones of those who have fallen in naval engagements. What masses of artillery and metallic treasures have sunk in the course of ages to the bottom of the deep. Oh! how much more useful would be the diver's bell than the balloon of the aëronaut! Boastful monuments of our glory are erected in our public squares, and described in the page of partial history; but the real monuments of our enthusiasm 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 forth to view, and be displayed to the eyes of our wondering posterity, in the same way as the remnants of elephants, of crocodiles, and of the mammoth, have been exhibited to our

own.

St. PIERRE'S Harmonies of Nature, vol. ii. p. 31.

261. [Gen. vi. 13.] Before we presume to decide respecting the universality of the deluge, we should be well informed of the nature of marine fossil bodies, which are found in divers parts of the earth, and of their situation and arrangement. It is necessary also to be acquainted with the state of those which are found actually under the sea, and the revolutions to which they are subject, while they are covered by it. It is still further requisite to attend to the revolutions which have been, and are continually observed, with respect to the sea-shores, which change their situation in several parts, some advancing on the land, and others retiring. If all these different facts be compared together, it will not be doubted, but there are actually under the earth marine bodies, which are found there only in consequence of these slow revolutions, and not of a universal deluge.

Phil. Trans. Abridg. vol. xi. p. 85.

262. [Gen. vii. 19.] There are a few leading facts in geology, says Mr. BAKEWELL, which we may consider as clearly ascertained by existing phenomena. Among these we may enumerate, 1st, That the present continents were once covered by water. 2nd, That the strata in which organic remains occur, were formed in succession over each other. 3d, That every regular stratum was once the uppermost part of the globe.

See the concluding chapter of his Introduction to Geology.

263.

In the motions of the earth as a planet, are to be discovered the superior causes which convert seas into continents, aud continents into seas. These 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 maxima of the central forces in the perihelion occasion the waters to accumulate alternatively upon either hemisphere. During 10,450 years, the sea is therefore gradually retiring and encroaching in both hemispheres ;-hence all the varieties of marine appearances and accumulations of marine remains in particular situations; and hence the succession of layers or strata, one upon another, of marine and earthy remains. The observatious of those strata prove, says Sir RICHARD PHILLIPS, that the periodical changes have already occurred at least three times; or, in other words, it appears that the site, on which I now stand, has been three times covered by the ocean, and three times has afforded an asylum for vegetables and animals!

Morning's Walk from London to Kew, pp. 338, 339.

270. [Gen. vi. 19, 20.] How could the unknown kinds of serpents in Brazil, the slow-bellied creatures of the Indies, and all those strange species of animals seen in the WestIndies, either come into the ark, or be conveyed out of it into those countries, which are divided from the continent where 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? We confess, say the writers of the Univer. Hist., we cannot tell. See vol. i. pp. 212, 213.

271. [Gen. vii. 11.] Egypt, a kind of valley through which the Nile flows, is 500 miles in length; and is bounded on the North-west by the Mediterranean, on the east by the Red Sea and the isthmus of Suez, on the south by Nubia and Abyssinia, and on the west by Barca. 73.

JOYCE's Introduction to the Sciences, p.

272. [Gen. vii. 19.] The whole extent of Egypt in length from Philac and the cataracts downwards, has been esteemed to have been between five and six hundred miles. It consisted of three principal divisions, the Thebais, the Heptanomis, 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, and sixteen in the intermediate region, which was styled Heptanomis. Herodotus tells us that the country was narrow, as it extended from the confines of Ethiopia downwards, till 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 the region was bounded on one side by the mountains of Lybia, and on the other, which was to the east, by the mountains of Arabia. As the latter consisted of one prolonged ridge, Herodotus speaks of them in the singular, as one mountain; and says that it reached no further than Lower Egypt, and the first division of the Nile, which was nearly opposite to the 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 the original stream, called the Sebeunetic, pursued its course downward, and after having sent out some other branches, at last entered the Mediterranean Sea. (BRYANT.)—According to HERODOTUS, the seven branches of the Nile, from east to west, are the Pelusian, the Mendesian, the Bucolic, the Sebennitic, the Sactic, the Bolbitine, and the Canopic.

273.

Euterpe, xvii.

The sources of the Nile were so absolutely unknown to the antients, that they supposed it impossible to discover 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 successive falls or cataracts-denoted, probably, in Genesis (vii. 11.), by the food gates of heaven. The Arabs and other Orientals often give it the name of a sea, because of its immense overflowing. See CALMET.

"

274. [Gen. vii. 12.] Though many subtle reasons were formerly invented to account for the great increase of the Nile, it is now universally acknowledged to be entirely owing to the heavy rains which fall in Ethiopia";-augmented enormously, at the time of this flood, by the rain which undoubtedly fell in Egypt also." The air is generally dry, in the upper part of the kingdom; yet some refreshing dews descend for several months after the swelling of the Nile, and rain is frequently seen in Lower Egypt during the winter."

MAVOR.

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 authority, it also appeared, that 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.

282.

Month. Mag. for May, 1814, p. 301.

The Mediterranean, originally a fresh water reservoir, filling unusually by the flood, would necessarily give back its waters till Egypt might be com

pletely overwhelmed The Arabic Geographer, CHRISTMANNUS, positively affirms, that in after ages Alexauder was the man by whose appointment and design the Isthmus Gaditanus being cut out, the Atlantic Ocean was thereby let into the Mediterranean, and a strait formed which is now called the Strait of Gibraltar.

See Geographus Arab., 1 par. cl. 4. And
Dr. GREGORY, de Eris et Epochis, p. 159.

289. [Gen. viii. 7-9.] The application of mankind, in the early ages of society, to the imitative arts of painting, carving, statuary, and the casting of figures in metals, seems to have preceded the discovery of letters; and to have been used as a written language to convey intelligence to their distant friends, or to transmit to posterity the history of themselves, or of their discoveries. Hence the origin of the hieroglyphic 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 of chemistry and astronomy, as the characters for the metals and planets, and the figures of animals on the celestial globe.

DARWIN'S Temple of Nature, canto i. 76.

290. [Gen. vii. 2.] The Egyptians, says HERODOTUS, are divided into seven classes. These are, the priests, the military, herdsmen, swineherds, tradesmen, interpreters, and pilots. They take their names from their professions. Euterpe, clxiv.

291. [Gen. vi. 20.] The mountaineers of Poland are denominated Cossacks, from the Polish term "Cosa or Kosa, signifying a Goat."

Public Prints.

292. [Gen. viii. 22.] In Egypt there is a double seedtime and harvest. Rice, Indian wheat, and what is called the corn of Damascus-having a large cane and an car like millet; are sown in March, before the Nile overflows, and reaped about October. But the barley, the flax, and the wheat which in that country is all bearded, are sown in November and December, as soon as the Nile has withdrawn its floods; and these are reaped before May.-Accordingly, Norden tells us that he saw there an extensive plain covered with Turkey-wheat, that was beginning to ripen, on the twentieth of November; and that on the twenty-ninth of the same month he saw the Arabs in a neighbouring plain, actually cutting their harvest.

See HARMER's Observa, vol. iv.

p.

2.

293. [Gen. vii. 7.] The custom of making fools; the consequent "hilarity and chagrin, the disappointment and joy, which the Englishman causes and is subject to, alternately, on the first of April, was originally part of rites. similar to those of the Egyptian Osiris-perhaps the same. 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 waters, in the night-emblematical of the period that he was in the ark. As they were dispersed on the shore, some one would call out to the others that he had found the object of their search; and when he had collected a number of spectators, 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, so long preserve and perpetuate the landmarks of the ignorance of their ancestors, is it astonishing this should be the case in a country (like Egypt), where even trifling customs are like the laws of the Medes and Persians, which never alter, and where the ample page of knowledge, through the bigotry of the people, has never been unfolded?"

Bib. Researches, vol. i. p. 99.

294. [Gen. vii. 11.] The Israelites began their year when the sun enters the sign Aries; that is, when the day and night are equal in the spring season. Their first month Abib, or Nisan, includes part of March and part of April in our way of reckoning. In the second month, the Flood commenced, identically at the time the river Nile in Egypt begins its annual inundation; that is, in May. " Yet no public notice is taken of its increase till the latter end of June, when it has usually risen to the height of nine or twelve feet, Egyptian cities, and continue to publish its daily augmenThe public criers then begin to proclaim it through all the tation till it rises to the height of twenty-four feet, when the dam of the great canal at Bulak is opened with great solemnity, and the day is devoted to feastings, fire-works, and all other demonstrations of public rejoicing."—MAVOR.Does not our Lord allude to such Egyptian feasting, and thereby ascertain the particular country destroyed by the flood? when He says, "As it was in the days of Noe, so shall it be also in the days of the Son of Man. They did eat, they drank, they married wives, they were given in marriage, until the day that Noe entered into the ark; and. the flood came, and destroyed them all." Luke xvii. 26, 27. See in particular, Amos ix. 5.

295. [Gen. vii. 3.] That the Egyptians, like the Romans, called their government the world, is placed beyond a doubt by the version which JEROME gives of the title of Joseph. In Gen. xli. 45, Pharaoh calls Joseph Zaphnath-Paaneah, which in Egyptian signifies, says Jerome, salvatorem mundi, the Saviour of the world. Now what world had Joseph saved, but the kingdom of Egypt ?

See Isai. xviii. 3. Luke ii. 1.