that our present steep declivities have begun to disintegrate, and
to form heaps of debris at their bases; that our present rivers
have begun to flow, and to deposit their alluvial matters; that our
present vegetation has begun to extend itself, and to produce soil;
that our present cliffs have begun to be corroded by the sea; that
our present downs have begun to be thrown up by the wind: just as
it must have been since this same epoch, that colonies of men have
begun, for the first or second time, to spread themselves, and to
form establishments in places fitted by nature for their reception.
I do not here take the action of volcanoes into account, not only
because of the irregularity of their eruptions, but because we have
no proofs of their not having been able to exist under the sea; and
because, on that account, they cannot serve us as a measure of the
time which has elapsed since its last retreat.
_Additions of Land by the Action of Rivers._
MM. Deluc and Dolomieu have most carefully examined the progress
of the formation of new ground by means of matters washed down by
rivers; and although exceedingly opposed to each other on many points
of the Theory of the Earth, they agree in this. These formations
augment very rapidly; they must have increased still more rapidly at
first, when the mountains furnished more materials to the rivers, and
yet their extent is still inconsiderable.
Dolomieu’s Memoir respecting Egypt[90] tends to prove, that the
tongue of land on which Alexander caused his city to be built,
did not exist in the days of Homer; that they were then able to
navigate directly from the island of Pharos into the gulf afterwards
called _Lake Mareotis_; and that this gulf was then, as indicated
by Menelaus, from fifteen to twenty leagues in length. It had,
therefore, only required the nine hundred years that elapsed between
the time of Homer and that of Strabo, to bring things to the state
in which this latter author describes them, and to reduce the gulf
in question to the form of a lake, of six leagues in length. It is
more certain, that, since that time, things have changed still more.
The sand thrown up by the sea and winds have formed, between the
island of Pharos and the site of ancient Alexandria, a tongue of land
two hundred fathoms in breadth, upon which the modern city has been
built. It has blocked up the nearest mouth of the Nile, and reduced
the lake Mareotis to almost nothing; while, during the same period,
the alluvial matter carried down by the Nile, has been deposited
along the rest of the shore, and has greatly increased its extent.
The ancients were not ignorant of these changes. Herodotus says,
that the Egyptian priests regarded their country as a gift of the
Nile. It is only in a manner, he adds, within a short period, that
the Delta has appeared[91]. Aristotle observes, that Homer speaks of
Thebes as if it had been the only great city in Egypt; and nowhere
makes mention of Memphis[92]. The Canopian and Pelusian mouths of
the Nile were formerly the principal ones; and the coast extended in
a straight line from the one to the other; and in this manner it
still appears in the charts of Ptolemy. Since then, the water has
been directed into the Bolbitian and Phatnitic mouths; and it is at
these entrances into the sea that the greatest depositions have been
formed, which have given the coast a semicircular outline. The cities
of Rosetta and Damieta, which were built upon these mouths, close
to the edge of the sea, less than a thousand years ago, are now two
leagues distant from it. According to Demaillet[93], it would only
have required twenty-six years to form a promontory of half a league
in extent before Rosetta.
An elevation is produced in the soil of Egypt, at the same time
that this extension of its surface takes place, and the bed of the
river rises in the same proportion as the adjacent plains, which
makes the inundations of every succeeding century pass far beyond
the marks which it had left during the preceding ones. According
to Herodotus, a period of nine hundred years was sufficient to
establish a difference of level amounting to ten or twelve feet. At
Elephantia[94], the inundation at present exceeds by seven feet the
greatest heights which it attained under Septimus Severus, at the
commencement of the third century. At Cairo, before it is judged
sufficient for the purpose of irrigation, it must exceed, by three
feet and a half, the height which was necessary in the ninth century.
The ancient monuments of this celebrated land have all their bases
more or less buried in the soil. The mud left by the river even
covers, to a depth of several feet, the artificial mounds on which
the ancient towns were built[95].
The delta of the Rhone is not less remarkable for its increase.
Astruc gives a detailed account of it in his Natural History of
Languedoc; and proves, by a careful comparison of the descriptions of
Mela, Strabo and Pliny, with the state of the places as they existed
at the commencement of the eighteenth century, taking into account
the statements of several writers of the middle age, that the arms
of the Rhone have increased three leagues in length in the course
of eighteen hundred years; that similar additions of land are made
to the west of the Rhone; and that a number of places, which were
situated, six or eight hundred years ago, at the edge of the sea or
of large pools, are now several miles distant from the water.
Any one may observe in Holland and Italy, with what rapidity the
Rhine, the Po, and the Arno, since they have been confined within
dikes, raise their beds, advance their mouths into the sea, forming
long promontories at their sides; and judge, from these facts, how
small a number of ages was required by these rivers to deposit the
low plains which they now traverse.
Many cities, which were flourishing sea-ports at well known periods
of history, are now some leagues inland; and several have even been
ruined, in consequence of this change of position. The inhabitants of
Venice find it exceedingly difficult to preserve the _lagunes_, by
which that city is separated from the continent; and notwithstanding
all their efforts, it will be inevitably joined to the mainland[96].
We know, from the testimony of Strabo, that Ravenna stood among
lagunes in the time of Augustus, as Venice does now; but at present
Ravenna is a league distant from the shore. Spina had been built by
the Greeks at the edge of the sea; yet in Strabo’s time it was ninety
stadia from it, and is now destroyed. Adria in Lombardy, which gave
name to the Adriatic sea, and of which it was, somewhat more than
twenty centuries ago, the principal port, is now six leagues distant
from it. Fortis has even rendered it probable that, at a more remote
period, the Euganian Mountains may have been islands.
M. de Prony, a learned member of the Institute, and inspector-general
of bridges and roads, has communicated to me some observations which
are of the greatest importance, as explaining those changes that
have taken place along the shores of the Adriatic[97]. Having been
directed by government to investigate the remedies that might be
applied to the devastations occasioned by the floods of the Po, he
ascertained that this river, since the period when it was shut in
by dikes, has so greatly raised the level of its bottom, that the
surface of its waters is now higher than the roofs of the houses in
Ferrara. At the same time, its alluvial depositions have advanced so
rapidly into the sea, that, by comparing old charts with the present
state, the shore is found to have gained more than six thousand
fathoms since 1604, giving an average of a hundred and fifty or a
hundred and eighty, and in some places two hundred feet yearly.
The Adige and the Po, are at the present day higher than the whole
tract of land that lies between them; and it is only by opening
new channels for them in the low grounds, which they have formerly
deposited, that the disasters which they now threaten may be averted.
The same causes have produced the same effects along the branches of
the Rhine and the Meuse; and thus the richest districts of Holland
have continually the frightful view of their rivers held up by
embankments at a height of from twenty to thirty feet above the level
of the land.
M. Wiebeking, director of bridges and highways in the kingdom of
Bavaria, has written a memoir upon this subject, so important as to
be worthy of being properly understood, both by the people and the
government, in all countries where these changes take place. In this
memoir, he shews that the property of raising the level of their beds
is common in a greater or less degree to all rivers.
The additions of land that have been made along the shores of the
North Sea, have not been less rapid in their progress than in
Italy. They can be easily traced in Friesland and in the country
of Groningen, where the epoch of the first dikes, constructed by
the Spanish governor Gaspar Roblès, is well known to have been in
1570. An hundred years afterwards, land had already been gained,
in some places, to the extent of three quarters of a league beyond
these dikes; and even the city of Groningen, partly built upon the
old land, on a limestone which does not belong to the present sea,
and in which the same shells are found as in the coarse limestone
of the neighbourhood of Paris, is only six leagues from the sea.
Having been upon the spot, I am enabled to adduce my own testimony
in confirmation of facts already well known, and which have been so
well stated by M. Deluc[98]. The same phenomenon may be as distinctly
observed along the coasts of East Friesland, and the countries of
Bremen and Holstein, as the period at which the new grounds were
inclosed for the first time is known, and the extent that has been
gained since can be measured. This new alluvial land, formed by the
rivers and the sea, is of astonishing fertility, and is so much
the more valuable, as the ancient soil of these countries, being
covered with heaths and peat-mosses, is almost everywhere unfit
for cultivation. The alluvial lands alone produce subsistence for
the many populous cities that have been built along these coasts,
since the middle age, and which perhaps would not have attained
their present flourishing condition, without the aid of the rich
deposits which the rivers had prepared for them, and which they are
continually augmenting.
If the size which Herodotus attributes to the Sea of Asoph, which he
makes equal to the Euxine[99], had been less vaguely indicated, and
if we knew precisely what he meant by the Gerrhus[100], we should
there find strong additional proofs of the changes produced by
rivers, and the rapidity with which they are made; for the alluvial
depositions of rivers alone have, since the time of Herodotus, that
is to say, in the course of two thousand and two or three hundred
years, reduced the Sea of Asoph[101] to its present comparatively
small size, shut up the course of the Gerrhus, or that branch of
the Dnieper which had formerly joined the Hypacyris, and discharged
its waters along with that river into the gulf called Carcinites,
now the Olu-Degnitz, and reduced the Hypacyris itself to almost
nothing[102]. We should possess proofs no less strong of the same
kind, could we be certain that the Oxus or Sihoun, which at present
discharges itself into the lake Aral, formerly reached the Caspian
Sea. But we are in possession of facts sufficiently conclusive on
the point in question, without adducing such as are doubtful, and
without being exposed to the necessity of making the ignorance of the
ancients in geography the basis of our physical propositions.[103]
_Progress of the Downs._
The downs or hillocks of sand which the sea throws up on low coasts,
when its bottom is sandy, have already been mentioned. Wherever human
industry has not succeeded in fixing these downs, they advance as
irresistibly upon the land as the alluvial depositions of the rivers
advance into the sea. In their progress inland, they push before them
the large pools formed by the rain which falls upon the neighbouring
grounds, and whose communication with the sea is intercepted by them.
In many places they proceed with a frightful rapidity, overwhelming
forests, buildings, and cultivated fields. Those upon the coast of
the Bay of Biscay[104] have already overwhelmed a great number of
villages mentioned in the records of the middle age; and at this
moment, in the single Department of the _Landes_, they threaten
ten with inevitable destruction. One of these villages, named
Mimisan, has been struggling against them these twenty years, with
the melancholy prospect of a sand-hill of more than sixty feet
perpendicular height visibly approaching it.
In 1802, the pent up pools overwhelmed five fine farming
establishments at the village of St Julian[105]. They have long
covered up an ancient Roman road leading from Bourdeaux to Bayonne,
and which could still be seen forty years ago, when the waters
were low[106]. The Adour, which is known to have formerly passed
Old Boucaut, to join the sea at Cape Breton, is now turned to the
distance of more than two thousand yards.
The late M. Bremontier, inspector of bridges and highways, who
conducted extensive operations upon these downs, estimated their
progress at sixty feet yearly, and in some places at seventy-two
feet. According to this calculation, it will only require two
thousand years to enable them to reach Bourdeaux; and, from their
present extent, it must have been somewhat more than four thousand
years since they began to be formed[107].
The overwhelming of the cultivated lands of Egypt, by the sterile
lands of Libya, which are thrown upon them by the west wind, is
a phenomenon of the same nature with the downs. These sands have
destroyed a number of cities and villages, whose ruins are still to
be seen; and this has happened since the conquest of the country
by the Mahometans, for the summits of the minarets of some mosques
are seen projecting beyond the sand[108]. With a progress so rapid,
they would, without doubt, have filled up the narrow parts of the
valley, if so many ages had elapsed since they began to be thrown
into it[109]; and there would no longer remain any thing between
the Libyan chain and the Nile. Here, then, we have another natural
chronometer, of which it would be as easy as interesting to obtain
the measure.
_Peat-Mosses and Slips._
The turbaries, or peat-mosses, which have been found so generally
in the northern parts of Europe, by the accumulation of the remains
of _sphagna_ and other aquatic mosses, also afford a measure of
time. They increase in height in proportions which are determinate
with regard to each place. They thus envelope the small knolls of
the lands on which they are formed; and several of these knolls have
been covered over within the memory of man. In other places the
peat-mosses descend along the valleys, advancing like glaciers, but
differing from them in this respect, that, while the glaciers melt
at their lower part, the progress of the peat is impeded by nothing.
By sounding their depth down to the solid ground, we may estimate
their age; and we find, with regard to these peat-mosses, as with
regard to the downs, that they cannot have derived their origin from
an indefinitely remote period. The same observation may be made with
regard to the slips or fallings, which take place with wonderful
rapidity at the foot of all steep rocks, and which are still very far
from having covered them. But as no precise measures have hitherto
been applied to these two agents, we shall not insist upon them at
greater length[110].
From all that has been said, it may be seen that nature uniformly
speaks the same language, everywhere informing us that the present
order of things cannot have commenced at a very remote period. And,
what is very remarkable, mankind everywhere speaks as nature, whether
we consult the received traditions of the various nations, or examine
their moral and political state, and the intellectual attainments
which they had made at the period when their authentic records
commence.
_The History of Nations confirms the Newness of the Continents._
In fact, although, at the first glance, the traditions of some
ancient nations, which extend their origin to so many thousands
of ages, appear strongly to contradict this newness of the world,
as it exists at present; yet when we examine these traditions
more carefully, we soon perceive that they are not sufficiently
authenticated. We are, on the contrary, quickly convinced, that true
history, deserving that name, and all that has been preserved of
positive documents regarding the first establishment of nations,
confirm what has been announced by the natural monuments already
mentioned.
The chronology of none of the western nations can be traced in a
continuous line farther back than 3000 years. None of them afford us,
previous to that period, nor even two or three centuries after, a
series of facts connected with any degree of probability. The north
of Europe possesses no authentic records which bear a remoter date
than that of its conversion to Christianity. The history of Spain,
of Gaul, and of England, commences only at the period when these
countries were conquered by the Romans; that of northern Italy is,
at the present day, almost unknown. The Greeks acknowledge that they
did not possess the art of writing, until it was taught them by the
Phœnicians, fifteen or sixteen centuries before the Christian era;
even for a long time after, their history is full of fables; and they
do not assign a more remote date than 300 years farther back, to
their uniting into distinct tribes. Of the history of Western Asia,
we have only a few contradictory extracts, which do not, with any
connection, give a greater antiquity than twenty-five centuries[111];
and even if we admit the few historical details which refer to more
remote periods, it can scarcely be extended to forty[112].
_Herodotus_, the first profane historian whose works have been
transmitted to us, has not a greater antiquity than 2300 years[113].
The historians, prior to him, whom he may have consulted, do not
date a century before him[114]. We may even judge of what they were
by the extravagances handed down to us, extracted from the works
of _Aristæus_ of Proconnesus, and some others. Before them we have
only poets; and _Homer_, the most ancient that we possess, Homer
the immortal master and model of all the West, flourished only
twenty-seven or twenty-eight centuries before the present time.
When these first historians speak of ancient events, whether
occurring in their own nation, or in neighbouring countries, they
only cite oral traditions, and not public works. It was not until
a long time after them, that pretended extracts were given from the
Egyptian, Phenician, and Babylonian annals. _Berosus_ wrote only in
the reign of Seleucus Nicanor; _Hieronymus_ in that of Antiochus
Soter, and _Manetho_ under Ptolemy Philadelphia; the whole three
having flourished only in the third century before the Christian era.
That _Sanconiatho_ was an author real or supposed, was not known
till Philo of Byblos had published a translation of his work in the
reign of Adrian, in the second century before Christ; and, when he
did become known, there was nothing found in his account of the early
ages, as in those of all the authors of this kind, but a puerile
theogony, or metaphysical doctrines, so disguised under the form of
allegory as to be unintelligible.
One nation alone has preserved annals written in prose before the
period of Cyrus, namely, the Jewish people. The part of the Old
Testament which is known by the name of the _Pentateuch_, has existed
in its present form, at least since the separation of the ten tribes
under Jeroboam, since it was received as authentic by the Samaritans
equally as the Jews, which assures us that its actual antiquity is
upwards of 2800 years. Besides this, we have no reason to doubt the
book of Genesis having been composed by Moses himself, which gives
it an antiquity of 500 years more, or of thirty-three centuries;
and it is only necessary to read it, to perceive that it has in part
been composed of fragments of previously existing works. We cannot,
therefore, hesitate to admit, that this is the most ancient writing
which has been transmitted to modern times in the West[115].
Now, this work, and all those which have been composed since,
whatever strangers their authors might be to Moses and his people,
speak of the nations on the shores of the Mediterranean as of recent
origin; they represent them as still in a half savage state some
ages before. And, further, they all speak of a general catastrophe,
an irruption of the waters, which occasioned an almost total
regeneration of the human race; and to this epoch they do not assign
a very remote antiquity. Those texts of the Pentateuch, which extend
this epoch the longest, do not place it farther back than twenty
centuries before Moses, and hence not more than 5400 years before the
present day[116].
In the poetical traditions of the Greeks, from which is derived
the whole of our profane history with reference to those remote
ages, there is nothing which contradicts the Jewish annals. On the
contrary, they have a wonderful agreement with them, by the epoch
which they assign to the Egyptian and Phenician colonies, by which
the first germs of civilization were carried into Greece. We find
that, about the same period when the Israelites took their departure
from Egypt, to carry into Palestine the sublime doctrine of the unity
of God, other colonies issued from the same country, to carry into
Greece a religion less pure, at least in its external character,
whatever might have been the secret doctrines which it reserved for
the initiated; while others, again, came from Phenicia, and imparted
to the Greeks the art of writing, and whatever was connected with
navigation and commerce[117].
It is undoubtedly far from being the case, that we have had since
that time a connected history, since we still find, for a long
period after these founders of colonies, a multitude of mythological
events, and adventures, in which gods and heroes are concerned; and
these chiefs are connected with authentic history only by means of
genealogies evidently fictitious[118]. And, it is still more certain,
that whatever preceded their arrival, could only have been preserved
in very imperfect traditions, and supplied by mere fictions, similar
to those of our monks of the middle age regarding the origin of the
European nations.
Thus, not only should we not be surprised to find, even in ancient
times, many doubts and contradictions respecting the epochs of
Cecrops, Deucalion, Cadmus and Danaus; and not only would it be
childish to attach the smallest importance to any opinion whatever,
regarding the precise dates of Inachus[119] or Ogyges[120]; but, if
any thing ought to surprise us, it is this,--that an infinitely more
remote antiquity had not been assigned to those personages. It is
impossible that there has not been in this case some effect of the
influence of received traditions, from which the inventors of fables
were not able to free themselves. One of the dates assigned to the
deluge of Ogyges, even agrees so much with one of those which have
been attributed to the deluge of Noah, that it is almost impossible
it should not have been derived from some source, where this latter
deluge had been the one intended to be spoken of[121].
As to Deucalion, whether this prince be regarded as a real or
fictitious personage, however little we enter into the manner in
which his deluge has been introduced into the poems of the Greeks,
and the various details with which it becomes successively enriched,
we perceive that it was nothing else than a tradition of the great
cataclysm, altered and placed by the Hellenians in the period which
they also assigned to Deucalion, because he was regarded as the
founder of their nation, and because his history is confounded with
that of all the chiefs of the renewed nations[122].