changed its level for the last 2000 years. efore attribute the elevation of these islands acting beneath them; and as we are unacany power, equal to such an effect, except es, so there can be little doubt but the force fire, was the active cause of their elevation. islands, indeed, contains a volcano always THE DELUGE. the Mosaic history has produced more ridiinfidels, or has been attacked with greater ess, than that of the universal deluge. whole earth, (say these men,) was ever surwater so deep as to cover all its mountains, on not only unphilosophical, but absolutely It is unphilosophical, because even admitting a sufficient quantity of water in the sea to a deluge, still no adequate cause can be ashe production of such mighty effects. But cause which might have moved the whole its bed, and cast it upon the land, still such ld not have been produced as a universal flood, d have required many times more water than whole earth, to have covered all its mountains ime." not stop to answer these objections, but pro, that notwithstanding these and many more rged against the probability of the Noachian o fact can be better established, since it has ent testimony of sacred, natural, and civil his vor. od of the deluge is fixed by chronological e year 1656, after the creation, corresponding 2348 before the Christian era. These two the period of the creation, 4004 years B. C. to Mr. Blair, on the 10th day of the second ch was on Sunday, Nov. 30th, B. C. 2347, God Noah and his family to enter into the ark; next Sunday, December 7, it began to rain, ad to ro'm forty days after which the deluce THE DELUGE. 10 days, making its continuance 150 days from ing. On Wednesday, May 6th, 2348 B. C. the on Mount Ararat. The tops of the mountains ible on Sunday, July 19th, and on Friday, Noth, Noah and all they that were with him came f the ark. reference to sacred history, we never could wn the time when this great flood happenedelf, although we ought to require nothing more ord of that history to establish its truth, is still the strongest proof from the appearance of the face. Baron Cuvier, after having spent a large a long life in investigating the natural history h, comes to the following conclusions on the he universal deluge, ales o THE DI C lr any other existing c desil more striking diluvia of rock, the greater part from Moscow to the Missis pological travellers, as stre alers, with blocks of gran magnitude, which hav tion from north to south, dred miles from their leys, lakes and seas, by repossessed a velocity to actual state of the globe, Reliquie Diluviana. it be inquired how it granite have been tran they do not belong t nity, it is answered that mmation or range of rock logist can readily di rous rock of Gibraltar, ens of which every c guished even by the minerals. To the bined with the analy s in identifying any s belongs On the secondary mou lopes facing the Alp primitive rock, some abic yards, occur. The the height of two thou level of the lake of Gene , or are more numero concur," says he, "with the opinions of M. M. d Dolomieu, that if there be any thing detereology, it is that the surface of our globe has ct to a vast and sudden revolution, not longer five or six thousand years; that this revolution and caused to disappear, the countries formerd by man, and the species of animals now most at, on the contrary, it has left the bottom of the dry, and has formed on it the countries now inhat since this revolution those few individuals ared, have propagated and spread over the lands dry, and consequently it is only since this epoch, cieties have assumed a progressive march; have ablishments; raised monuments, and combined ystems."-Cuvier Revolu. Globe, 180. 66 ects of that grand and awful cataclysm are still in every country, and in nearly every section on the globe. Vast accumulations of rounded, orn pebbles, huge blocks of granite, and ims of sand and gravel, are found in places where now in operation ever could have placed them; hat they have been moved is evident from the ces, or the places where they occur. In the rse of my geological travels," says Prof. Buckm Cornwall to Caithness, from Calais to the s; in Ireland, in Italy, I have scarcely ever e without finding a perpetual succession of degravel, sand or loam, in situations that cannot I to the action of modern torrents, rivers or d deepest valleys of the velled across the line proving clearly, the We may hence mus Transfer from the Savoy as al ther existing causes. And, with respect to triking diluvial phenomena of drifted massgreater part of the northern hemisphere, to the Mississippi, is described by various ellers, as strewed on its hills as well as its locks of granite, and other rocks of enor- de, which have been drifted (mostly in a diorth to south,) a distance, sometimes many from their native beds, across mountains, and seas, by a force of water, which must I a velocity to which nothing that occurs in e of the globe, affords the slightest parallel." e Diluviana. uired how it can be ascertained that blocks ve been transported from a distance, and not belong to disrupted mountains in the answered that there is a peculiarity in every range of rocks or mountains, by which the can readily distinguish them. Thus the calof Gibraltar, and the iron ore of Elba, spehich every collection contains, are readily even by the most common observer from all s. To the practised eye of a mineralogist, h the analysis of the chemist, no difficulty tifying any specimen with the rock to which condary mountains of Jura, particularly on ing the Alps, a great many loose fragments rock, some of them containing a thousand occur. These are strewed over the surface, of two thousand five hundred feet above the ake of Geneva. They no where stand highore numerous than opposite to the largest, alleys of the Alps. They have undoubtedly oss the line of these valleys, their composiclearly, the mountain ridges from which they may hence infer, that at the period of their the Savoy Alps, the lake of Geneva did not ise they must have remained at its bottom, ing found on its opposite boundary mountain. logy, p. 362. ing the transporting power of water, it must Otten, as already noticed, that a solid, when a fluid, becomes lighter by the weight of the TH he fluid which it displaces. displaces. Thus, if a rock be heavy, bulk for bulk, as water, then when imthat fluid, it loses just one half its weight. A lift a stone under water with great ease, but if e of the above fact, he will be astonished to find innot, with all his might, raise it above the sur he has visited, bear the modified by the force of v regions. Besides the evidence Suppose that on diggin is no difficulty in conceiving that immense blocks ay be moved by water, since the weight lost by n, is in exact proportion to the bulk; and thereittle brook will move a pebble, by the same law, ood will transport a mountain. The blocks of und on the opposite side of the lake of Geneva, bably carried there by the action of the deluge, ch the retiring waters scooped out the lake, and in the situation in which they are now found. he plains on the north of Europe, exhibit on their large blocks of granite, called boulders, with their les worn off, showing that they have been rolled stance. Their surfaces never exhibit the smoothea-worn pebbles, nor do their forms show the efng-continued friction, like rocks which are found hores of the ocean, a proof that the catastrophe -ced them from their original situations was not ontinuance. Sir James Hall has even discovered s of such movements on rocks now in their oriations in the vicinity of Edinburgh. That disists of hills and valleys, the surfaces of which are with the wrecks of former rocks, which have been om their ancient positions by some mighty pownels, or furrows may be observed on the surfaces ocks, across which these have been forced. The ering the surfaces of these rocks, being removed, found to resemble a road along which many dies have been recently dragged, as if every agment had made a scratch of greater or less t passed. These furrows are parallel to the genction in which the diluvial current passed, as the forms of the hills and valleys.' he diluvial waters reached the summits of lofty s, is evident from the boulder blocks of Mount ing thrown over on the high acclivities of Mount rofessor Buckland says, that the Alps and Caras well as every other mountainous region which cause can No adequate effect, except it be the cut shows the two h ata through each, and ed. Such examples occurrence, and wou dice taken of the strata Immense beds of sand eposited in places and sit fr on any supposition eeping flood of waters , bear the same evidence of having been e force of water, as do the hills of the lower evidence which the situations of rocky t of a great flood, there are proofs of the nd almost everywhere among the hills and s many hills have been formed by the rearth, which forms the valley between them, proving that such valleys did not always the strata forming the two hills were once at on digging wells, on two hills separated ere should be found a bed of gravel ten feet ayer of clay, then a bed of chalk, &c., and nations should correspond exactly with each respect to kind, direction and thickness; ence would be unavoidable, that these strata d through the valley, and that both the hills. ere formed by the removal of the earth from that this must have been effected by a stream existing, or by a great flood. But in the h we refer no such streams exist, nor from ver did exist, there being no sources of water y could be supplied. |