All the particulars of the Biblical narrative here recited are only to
be explained by the volcanic and muddy eruption which preceded the
formation of mount Ararat. The waters which produced the inundation of
these countries proceeded from a volcanic eruption accompanied by
enormous volumes of vapour, which in due course became condensed and
descended on the earth, inundating the extensive plains which now
stretch away from the foot of Ararat. The expression, “the earth,” or
“all the earth” as it is translated in the Vulgate, which might be
implied to mean the entire globe, is explained by Marcel de Serres, in a
learned book entitled “La Cosmogonie de Moïse,” and other philologists,
as being an inaccurate translation. He has proved that the Hebrew word
_haarets_, incorrectly translated “all the earth,” is often used in the
sense of _region_ or _country_, and that, in this instance, Moses used
it to express only the part of the globe which was then peopled, and not
its entire surface. In the same manner “_the mountains_” (rendered “_all
the mountains_” in the Vulgate), only implies all the mountains known to
Moses. Similarly, M. Glaire, in the “Christomathie Hébraïque,” which he
has placed at the end of his Grammar, quotes the passage in this sense:
“The waters were so prodigiously increased, that the highest mountains
of the vast horizon were covered by them;” thus restricting the
mountains covered by the inundation to those bounded by the horizon.
Nothing occurs, therefore, in the description given by Moses, to hinder
us from seeing in the Asiatic deluge a means made use of by God to
chastise and punish the human race, then in the infancy of its
existence, and which had strayed from the path which he had marked out
for it. It seems to establish the countries lying at the foot of the
Caucasus as the cradle of the human race; and it seems to establish also
the upheaval of a chain of mountains, preceded by an eruption of
volcanic mud, which drowned vast territories entirely composed, in these
regions, of plains of great extent. Of this deluge many races besides
the Jews have preserved a tradition. Moses dates it from 1,500 to 1,800
years before the epoch in which he wrote. Berosus, the Chaldean
historian, who wrote at Babylon in the time of Alexander, speaks of a
universal deluge, the date of which he places immediately before the
reign of Belus, the father of Ninus.
The _Vedas_, or sacred books of the Hindus, supposed to have been
composed about the same time as Genesis, that is, about 3,300 years ago,
make out that the deluge occurred 1,500 years before their time. The
_Guebers_ speak of the same event as having occurred about the same
date.
Confucius, the celebrated Chinese philosopher and lawgiver, born towards
the year 551 before Christ, begins his history of China by speaking of
the Emperor named Jas, whom he represents as making the waters flow
back, which, _being raised to the heavens_, washed the feet of the
highest mountains, covered the less elevated hills, and inundated the
plains. Thus the Biblical deluge (PLATE XXXIII.) is confirmed in many
respects; but it was local, like all phenomena of the kind, and was
the result of the upheaval of the mountains of western Asia.
[Illustration: XXXIII.--The Asiatic Deluge.]
A deluge, quite of modern date, conveys a tolerably exact idea of this
kind of phenomena. We recall the circumstances the better to comprehend
the true nature of the ravages the deluge inflicted upon some Asiatic
countries in the Quaternary period. At six days’ journey from the city
of Mexico there existed, in 1759, a fertile and well-cultivated
district, where grew abundance of rice, maize, and bananas. In the month
of June frightful earthquakes shook the ground, and were continued
unceasingly for two whole months. On the night of the 28th September the
earth was violently convulsed, and a region of many leagues in extent
was slowly raised until it attained a height of about 500 feet over a
surface of many square leagues. The earth undulated like the waves of
the sea in a tempest; thousands of small hills alternately rose and
fell, and, finally, an immense gulf opened, from which smoke, fire,
red-hot stones and ashes were violently discharged, and darted to
prodigious heights. Six mountains emerged from this gaping gulf; among
which the volcanic mountain Jorullo rises 2,890 feet above the ancient
plain, to the height of 4,265 feet above the sea.
At the moment when the earthquake commenced the two rivers _Cuitimba_
and _San Pedro_ flowed backwards, inundating all the plain now occupied
by Jorullo; but in the regions which continually rose, a gulf opened and
swallowed up the rivers. They reappeared to the west, but at a point
very distant from their former beds.
This inundation reminds us on a small scale of the phenomena which
attended the deluge of Noah.
* * * * *
Besides the deposits resulting from the partial deluges which we have
described as occurring in Europe and Asia during the Quaternary epoch
there were produced in the same period many new formations resulting
from the deposition of _alluvia_ thrown down by seas and rivers. These
deposits are always few in number, and widely disseminated. Their
stratification is as regular as that of any which belong to preceding
periods; they are distinguished from those of the Tertiary epoch, with
which they are most likely to be confounded, by their situation, which
is very frequently upon the shores of the sea, and by the predominance
of shells of a species identical with those now living in the adjacent
seas.
A marine formation of this kind, which, after constituting the coast of
Sicily, principally on the side of Girgenti, Syracuse, Catania, and
Palermo, occupies the centre of the island, where it rises to the
height of 3,000 feet, is amongst the most remarkable of the great
Quaternary European productions. It is chiefly formed of two great beds;
the lower a bluish argillaceous marl, the other a coarse but very
compact limestone, both containing shells analogous to those of the
present Mediterranean coast. The same formation is found in the
neighbouring islands, especially in Sardinia and Malta. The great sandy
deserts of Africa, as well as the argillo-arenaceous formation of the
steppes of Eastern Russia, and the fertile Tchornozem, or “_black
earth_” of its southern plains, have the same geological origin; so have
the Travertines of Tuscany, Naples, and Rome, and the Tufas, which are
an essential constituent of the Neapolitan soil.
The pampas of South America--which consist of an argillaceous soil of a
deep reddish-brown colour, with horizontal beds of marly clay and
calcareous tufa, containing shells either actually living now in the
Atlantic, or identical with fresh-water shells of the country--ought
surely to be considered as a Quaternary deposit, of even greater extent
than the preceding.
We are now approaching so near to our own age, that we can, as it were,
trace the hand of Nature in her works. Professor Ramsay shows, in the
Memoirs of the Government Geological Survey, that beds nearly a mile in
thickness have been removed by denudation from the summit of the Mendip
Hills, and that broad areas in South Wales and the neighbouring counties
have been denuded of their higher beds, the materials being transported
elsewhere to form newer strata. Now, no combination of causes has been
imagined which has not involved submersion during long periods, and
subsequent elevation for periods of longer or shorter duration.
We can hardly walk any great distance along the coast, either of England
or Scotland, without remarking some flat terrace of unequal breadth, and
backed by a more or less steep escarpment--upon such a terrace many of
the towns along the coast are built. No geologist now doubts that this
fine platform, at the base of which is a deposit of loam or sandy
gravel, with marine shells, had been, at some period, the line of coast
against which the waves of the ocean once broke at high water. At that
period the sea rose twenty, and thirty, and some places a hundred feet
higher than it does now. The ancient sea-beaches in some places formed
terraces of sand and gravel, with littoral shells, some broken, others
entire, and corresponding with species in the seas below; in others they
form bold projecting promontories or deep bays. In an historical point
of view, this coast-line should be very ancient, though it may be only
of yesterday in a geological sense--its origin ascending far beyond
written tradition. The wall of Antoninus, raised by the Romans as a
protection from the attacks of the Caledonians, was built, in the
opinion of the best authorities, not in connection with the old, but
with the new coast-line. We may, then, conclude that in A.D. 140, when
the greater part of this wall was constructed, the zone of the ancient
coast-line had attained its present elevation above the actual level of
the sea.
The same proofs of a general and gradual elevation of the country are
observable almost everywhere: in the estuary of the Clyde, canoes and
other works of art have been exhumed, and assigned to a recent period.
Near St. Austell, and at Carnon, in Cornwall, human skulls and other
relics have been met with beneath marine strata, in which the bones of
whales and still-existing species of land-quadrupeds were imbedded. But
in the countries where hard limestone rocks prevail, in the ancient
Peloponnesus, along the coast of Argolis and Arcadia, three and even
four ranges of ancient sea-cliffs are well preserved, which Messrs.
Boblaye and Verlet describe as rising one above the other, at different
distances from the present coast, sometimes to the height of 1,000 feet,
as if the upheaving force had been suspended for a time, leaving the
waves and currents to throw down and shape the successive ranges of
lofty cliffs. On the other hand, some well-known historical sites may be
adduced as affording evidence of the subsidence of the coast-line of the
Mediterranean in times comparatively modern. In the Bay of Baiæ, the
celebrated temple of Serapis, at Puzzuoli, near Naples, which was
originally built about 100 feet from the sea, and at or near its present
level, exhibits proofs of having gradually sunk nineteen feet, and of a
subsequent elevation of the ground on which the temple stands of nearly
the same amount.
So, also, about half a mile along the sea-shore, and standing at some
distance from it, in the sea, there are the remains of buildings and
columns which bear the name of the Temples of the Nymphs and of Neptune.
The tops of these broken columns are now nearly on a level with the
surface of the water, which is about five feet deep.
With respect to the littoral deposits of the Quaternary period, they are
of very limited extent, except in a few localities. They are found on
the western coast of Norway, and on the coasts of England. In France, an
extensive bed of Quaternary formation is seen on the shores of the
ancient Guienne, and on other parts of the coast, where it is sometimes
concealed by trees and shrubs, or by blown sand, as at Dax in the
Landes, where a steep bank may be traced about twelve miles inland, and
parallel with the present coast, which falls suddenly about fifty feet
from a higher platform of the land, to a lower one extending to the sea.
In making some excavations for the foundations of a building at Abesse,
in 1830, it was discovered that this fall consisted of drift-sand,
filling up a steep perpendicular cliff about fifty feet high, consisting
of a bed of Tertiary clay extending to the sea, a bed of limestone with
Tertiary shells and corals, and, at the summit, the Tertiary sand of the
Landes. The marine beds, together with the alluvium of the rivers, have
given rise to those deposits which occur more especially near the mouths
of rivers and watercourses.
[Illustration: Fig. 201.--Shell of Planorbis corneus.]