water, the surface of which reached within 160 feet of the level of the
pass of Jezrael, and possibly stood higher, is this: Remains {611} of
alluvial strata, containing shells of the freshwater mollusks which still
inhabit the valley, worn down into terraces by waves which long rippled at
the same level, and furrowed by the channels excavated by modern rainfalls,
have been found at the former height; and they are repeated, at intervals,
lower down, until the Ghor, or plain of the Jordan, itself an alluvial
deposit, is reached. These strata attain a considerable thickness; and they
indicate that the epoch at which the freshwater mere of Palestine reached
its highest level is extremely remote; that its diminution has taken place
very slowly, and with periods of rest, during which the first formed
deposits were cut down into terraces. This conclusion is strikingly borne
out by other facts. A volcanic region stretches from Galilee to Gilead and
the Hauran, on each side of the northern end of the valley. Some of the
streams of basaltic lava which have been thrown out from its craters and
clefts in times of which history has no record, have run athwart the course
of the Jordan itself, or of that of some of its tributary streams. The lava
streams, therefore, must be of later date than the depressions they fill.
And yet, where they have thus temporarily dammed the Jordan and the Jermuk,
these streams have had time to cut through the hard basalts and lay bare
the beds, over which, before the lava streams invaded them, they flowed.
In fact, the antiquity of the present Jordan-Arabah valley, as a hollow in
a tableland, out of reach of the sea, and troubled by no diluvial or other
{612} disturbances, beyond the volcanic eruptions of Gilead and of Galilee,
is vast, even as estimated by a geological standard. No marine deposits of
later than miocene age occur in or about it; and there is every reason to
believe that the Syro-Arabian plateau has been dry land, throughout the
pliocene and later epochs, down to the present time. Raised beaches,
containing recent shells, on the Levantine shores of the Mediterranean and
on those of the Red Sea, testify to a geologically recent change of the sea
level to the extent of 250 or 300 feet, probably produced by the slow
elevation of the land; and, as I have already remarked, the alluvial plain
of the Euphrates and Tigris appears to have been affected in the same way
though seemingly to a less extent. But of violent, or catastrophic, change
there is no trace. Even the volcanic outbursts have flowed in even sheets
over the old land surface; and the long lines of the horizontal terraces
which remain, testify to the geological insignificance of such earthquakes
as have taken place. It is, indeed, possible that the original formation of
the valley may have been determined by the well-known fault, along which
the western rocks are relatively depressed and the eastern elevated. But,
whether that fault was effected slowly or quickly, and whenever it came
into existence, the excavation of the valley to its present width, no less
than the sculpturing of its steep walls and of the innumerable deep ravines
which score them down to the very bottom, are indubitably due to the
operation of rain and streams, during an enormous length of time, {613}
without interruption or disturbance of any magnitude. The alluvial deposits
which have been mentioned are continued into the lateral ravines, and have
more or less filled them. But, since the waters have been lowered, these
deposits have been cut down to great depths, and are still being excavated
by the present temporary, or permanent, streams. Hence, it follows, that
all these ravines must have existed before the time at which the valley was
occupied by the great mere. This fact acquires a peculiar importance when
we proceed to consider the grounds for the conclusion that the old
Palestinian mere attained its highest level in the cold period of the
pleistocene epoch. It is well known that glaciers formerly came low down on
the flanks of Lebanon and Antilebanon; indeed, the old moraines are the
haunts of the few survivors of the famous cedars. This implies a perennial
snowcap of great extent on Hermon; therefore, a vastly greater supply of
water to the sources of the Jordan which rise on its flanks; and, in
addition, such a total change in the general climate, that the innumerable
Wadys, now traversed only by occasional storm torrents, must have been
occupied by perennial streams. All this involves a lower annual temperature
and a moist and rainy atmosphere. If such a change of meteorological
conditions could be effected now, when the loss by evaporation from the
surface of the Dead Sea salt-pan balances all the gain from the Jordan and
other streams, the scale would be turned in the other direction. The waters
of the Dead Sea would become diluted; its level would rise; {614} it would
cover, first the plain of the Jordan, then the lake of Galilee, then the
middle Jordan between this lake and that of Huleh (the ancient Merom); and,
finally, it would encroach, northwards, along the course of the upper
Jordan, and, southwards, up the Wady Arabah, until it reached some 260 feet
above the level of the Mediterranean, when it would attain a permanent
level, by sending any superfluity through the pass of Jezrael to swell the
waters of the Kishon, and flow thence into the Mediterranean.
Reverse the process, in consequence of the excess of loss by evaporation
over gain by inflow, which must have set in as the climate of Syria changed
after the end of the pleistocene epoch, and (without taking into
consideration any other circumstances) the present state of things must
eventually be reached--a concentrated saline solution in the deepest part
of the valley--water, rather more charged with saline matter than ordinary
fresh water, in the lower Jordan and the lake of Galilee--fresh waters,
still largely derived from the snows of Hermon, in the upper Jordan and in
Lake Huleh. But, if the full state of Jordan valley marks the glacial
epoch, then it follows that the excavation of that valley by atmospheric
agencies must have occupied an immense antecedent time--a large part,
perhaps the whole, of the pliocene epoch; and we are thus forced to the
conclusion that, since the miocene epoch, the physical conformation of the
Holy Land has been substantially what it is now. It has been more or less
rained upon, searched by {615} earthquakes here and there, partially
overflowed by lava streams, slowly raised (relatively to the sea-level) a
few hundred feet. But there is not a shadow of ground for supposing that,
throughout all this time, terrestrial animals have ceased to inhabit a
large part of its surface; or that, in many parts, they have been, in any
respect, incommoded by the changes which have taken place.
The evidence of the general stability of the physical conditions of Western
Asia, which is furnished by Palestine and by the Euphrates Valley, is only
fortified if we extend our view northwards to the Black Sea and the
Caspian. The Caspian is a sort of magnified replica of the Dead Sea. The
bottom of the deepest part of this vast inland mere is 3000 feet below the
level of the Mediterranean, while its surface is lower by 85 feet. At
present, it is separated, on the west, by wide spaces of dry land from the
Black Sea, which has the same height as the Mediterranean, and, on the
east, from the Aral, 138 feet above that level. The waters of the Black
Sea, now in communication with the Mediterranean by the Dardanelles and the
Bosphorus, are salt, but become brackish northwards, where the rivers of
the steppes pour in a great volume of fresh water. Those of the shallower
northern half of the Caspian are similarly affected by the Volga and the
Ural, while, in the shallow bays of the southern division, they become
extremely saline in consequence of the intense evaporation. The Aral Sea,
though supplied by the Jaxartes and the Oxus, has brackish water. There is
evidence {616} that, in the pliocene and pleistocene periods, to go no
farther back, the strait of the Dardanelles did not exist, and that the
vast area, from the valley of the Danube to that of the Jaxartes, was
covered by brackish or, in some parts, fresh water to a height of at least
200 feet above the level of the Mediterranean. At the present time, the
water-parting which separates the northern part of the basin of the Caspian
from the vast plains traversed by the Tobol and the Obi, in their course to
the Arctic Ocean, appears to be less than 200 feet above the latter. It
would seem, therefore, to be very probable that, under the climatal
conditions of part of the pleistocene period, the valley of the Obi played
the same part in relation to the Ponto-Aralian sea, as that of the Kishon
may have done to the great mere of the Jordan valley; and that the outflow
formed the channel by which the well-known Arctic elements of the fauna of
the Caspian entered it. For the fossil remains imbedded in the strata
continuously deposited in the Aralo-Caspian area, since the latter end of
the miocene epoch, show no sign that, from that time onward, it has ever
been covered by sea water. Therefore, the supposition of a free inflow of
the Arctic Ocean, which at one time was generally received, as well as that
of various hypothetical deluges from that quarter, must be seriously
questioned.
The Caspian and the Aral stand in somewhat the same relation to the vast
basin of dry land in which they lie, as the Dead Sea and the lake of
Galilee to the Jordan valley. They are the remains of a vast, {617} mostly
brackish, mere, which has dried up in consequence of the excess of
evaporation over supply, since the cold and damp climate of the pleistocene
epoch gave place to the increasing dryness and great summer heats of
Central Asia in more modern times. The desiccation of the Aralo-Caspian
basin, which communicated with the Black Sea only by a comparatively narrow
and shallow strait along the present valley of Manytsch, the bottom of
which was less than 100 feet above the Mediterranean, must have been vastly
aided by the erosion of the strait of the Dardanelles towards the end of
the pleistocene epoch, or perhaps later. For the result of thus opening a
passage for the waters of the Black Sea into the Mediterranean must have
been the gradual lowering of its level to that of the latter sea. When this
process had gone so far as to bring down the Black Sea water to within less
than a hundred feet of its present level, the strait of Manytsch ceased to
exist; and the vast body of fresh water brought down by the Danube, the
Dnieper, the Don, and other South Russian rivers was cut off from the
Caspian, and eventually delivered into the Mediterranean. Thus, there is as
conclusive evidence as one can well hope to obtain in these matters, that,
north of the Euphrates valley, the physical geography of an area as large
as all Central Europe has remained essentially unchanged, from the miocene
period down to our time; just as, to the west of the Euphrates valley,
Palestine has exhibited a similar persistence of geographical type. To the
south, the valley of the Nile {618} tells exactly the same story. The holes
bored by miocene mollusks in the cliffs east and west of Cairo bear witness
that, in the miocene epoch, it contained an arm of the sea, the bottom of
which has since been gradually filled up by the alluvium of the Nile, and
elevated to its present position. But the higher parts of the Mokattam and
of the desert about Ghizeh, have been dry land from that time to this. Too
little is known of the geology of Persia, at present, to allow any positive
conclusion to be enunciated. But, taking the name to indicate the whole
continental mass of Iran, between the valleys of the Indus and the
Euphrates, the supposition that its physical geography has remained
unchanged for an immensely long period is hardly rash. The country is, in
fact, an enormous basin, surrounded on all sides by a mountainous rim, and
subdivided within by ridges into plateaus and hollows, the bottom of the
deepest of which, in the province of Seistan, probably descends to the
level of the Indian Ocean. These depressions are occupied by salt marshes
and deserts, in which the waters of the streams which flow down the sides
of the basin are now dissipated by evaporation. I am acquainted with no
evidence that the present Iranian basin was ever occupied by the sea; but
the accumulations of gravel over a great extent of its surface indicate
long-continued water action. It is, therefore, a fair presumption that
large lakes have covered much of its present deserts, and that they have
dried up by the operation of the same changed climatal conditions as those
which have {619} reduced the Caspian and the Dead Sea to their present
dimensions.[181]
Thus it would seem that the Euphrates valley, the centre of the fabled
Noachian deluge, is also the centre of a region covering some millions of
square miles of the present continents of Europe, Asia, and Africa, in
which all the facts, relevant to the argument, at present known, converge
to the conclusion that, since the miocene epoch, the essential features of
its physical geography have remained unchanged; that it has neither been
depressed below the sea, nor swept by diluvial waters since that time; and
that the Chaldean version of the legend of a flood in the Euphrates valley
is, of all those which are extant, the only one which is even consistent
with probability, since it depicts a local inundation not more severe than
one which might be brought about by a concurrence of favourable conditions
at the present day, and which might probably have been more easily effected
when the Persian Gulf extended farther north. Hence, the recourse to the
"glacial epoch" for some event which might colourably represent a flood,
distinctly asserted by the only authority for it to have occurred in
historical times, is peculiarly unfortunate. Even a Welsh antiquarian might
hesitate over the supposition that a tradition of the fate of Moel Tryfaen,
in the glacial epoch, had furnished the basis of fact for a legend {620}
which arose among people whose own experience abundantly supplied them with
the needful precedents. Moreover, if evidence of interchanges of land and
sea are to be accepted as "confirmations" of Noah's deluge, there are
plenty of sources for the tradition to be had much nearer than Wales.
The depression now filled by the Red Sea, for example, appears to be,
geologically, of very recent origin. The later deposits found on its
shores, two or three hundred feet above the sea level, contain no remains
older than those of the present fauna; while, as I have already mentioned,
the valley of the adjacent delta of the Nile was a gulf of the sea in
miocene times. But there is not a particle of evidence that the change of
relative level which admitted the waters of the Indian Ocean between Arabia
and Africa, took place any faster than that which is now going on in
Greenland and Scandinavia, and which has left their inhabitants
undisturbed. Even more remarkable changes were effected, towards the end
of, or since, the glacial epoch, over the region now occupied by the
Levantine Mediterranean and the AEgean Sea. The eastern coast region of Asia
Minor, the western of Greece, and many of the intermediate islands, exhibit
thick masses of stratified deposits of later tertiary age and of purely
lacustrine characters; and it is remarkable that, on the south side of the
island of Crete, such masses present steep cliffs facing the sea, so that
the southern boundary of the lake in which they were formed must have been
situated where the sea now flows. Indeed, there are {621} valid reasons for
the supposition that the dry land once extended far to the west of the
present Levantine coast, and not improbably forced the Nile to seek an
outlet to the north-east of its present delta--a possibility of no small
importance in relation to certain puzzling facts in the geographical
distribution of animals in this region. At any rate, continuous land joined
Asia Minor with the Balkan peninsula; and its surface bore deep freshwater
lakes, apparently disconnected with the Ponto-Aralian sea. This state of
things lasted long enough to allow of the formation of the thick lacustrine
strata to which I have referred. I am not aware that there is the smallest
ground for the assumption that the AEgean land was broken up in consequence
of any of the "catastrophes" which are so commonly invoked.[182] For
anything that appears to the contrary, the narrow, steep-sided, straits
between the islands of the AEgean archipelago may have been originally
brought about by ordinary atmospheric and stream action; and then filled
from the Mediterranean, during a slow submergence proceeding from the south
northwards. The strait of the Dardanelles is bounded by undisturbed
pleistocene strata forty feet thick, through which, to all appearance, the
present passage has been quietly cut.
That Olympus and Ossa were torn asunder and the waters of the Thessalian
basin poured forth, is a very ancient notion, and an often cited
"confirmation" of Deucalion's flood. It has not yet ceased to {622} be in
vogue, apparently because those who entertain it are not aware that modern
geological investigation has conclusively proved that the gorge of the
Peneus is as typical an example of a valley of erosion as any to be seen in
Auvergne or in Colorado.[183]
Thus, in the immediate vicinity of the vast expanse of country which can be
proved to have been untouched by any catastrophe before, during, and since
the "glacial epoch," lie the great areas of the AEgean and the Red Sea, in
which, during or since the glacial epoch, changes of the relative positions
of land and sea have taken place, in comparison with which the submergence
of Moel Tryfaen, with all Wales and Scotland to boot, does not come to
much.
What, then, is the relevancy of talk about the "glacial epoch" to the
question of the historical veracity of the narrator of the story of the
Noachian deluge? So far as my knowledge goes, there is not a particle of
evidence that destructive inundations were more common over the general
surface of the earth in the glacial epoch than they have been before or
since. No doubt the fringe of an ice-covered region must be always liable
to them; but, if we examine the records of such catastrophes in historical
times, those produced in the deltas of great rivers, or in lowlands like
Holland, by sudden floods, combined with gales of wind or with unusual
tides, far excel all others.
With respect to such inundations as are the {623} consequences of
earthquakes, and other slight movements of the crust of the earth, I have
never heard of anything to show that they were more frequent and severer in
the quaternary or tertiary epochs than they are now. In the discussion of
these, as of all other geological problems, the appeal to needless
catastrophes is born of that impatience of the slow and painful search
after sufficient causes in the ordinary course of nature which is a
temptation to all, though only energetic ignorance nowadays completely
succumbs to it.
POSTSCRIPT.
My best thanks are due to Mr. Gladstone for his courteous withdrawal of
one of the statements to which I have thought it needful to take
exception. The familiarity with controversy, to which Mr. Gladstone
alludes, will have accustomed him to the misadventures which arise
when, as sometimes will happen in the heat of fence, the buttons come
off the foils. I trust that any scratch which he may have received will
heal as quickly as my own flesh wounds have done.
A contribution to the last number of this Review of a different order
would be left unnoticed, were it not that my silence would convert me
into an accessory to misrepresentations of a very grave character.
However, I shall restrict myself to the barest possible statement of
facts, leaving my readers to draw their own conclusions.
In an article entitled "A Great Lesson," published in this Review for
September 1887:
(1) The Duke of Argyll says the "overthrow of Darwin's speculations"
(p. 301) concerning the origin of coral reefs, which he fancied had
taken place, had been received by men of science "with a grudging
silence as far as public discussion is concerned" (p. 301).
{624} The truth is that, as every one acquainted with the literature of
the subject was well aware, the views supposed to have effected this
overthrow had been fully and publicly discussed by Dana in the United
States; by Geikie, Green, and Prestwich in this country; by Lapparent
in France; and by Credner in Germany.
(2) The Duke of Argyll says "that no serious reply has ever been
attempted" (p. 305).
The truth is that the highest living authority on the subject,
Professor Dana, published a most weighty reply, two years before the
Duke of Argyll committed himself to this statement.
(3) The Duke of Argyll uses the preceding products of defective
knowledge, multiplied by excessive imagination, to illustrate the
manner in which "certain accepted opinions" established "a sort of
Reign of Terror in their own behalf" (p. 307).
The truth is that no plea, except that of total ignorance of the
literature of the subject, can excuse the errors cited, and that the
"Reign of Terror" is a purely subjective phenomenon.
(4) The letter in _Nature_ for the 17th of November 1887, to which I am
referred, contains neither substantiation, nor retractation, of
statements 1 and 2. Nevertheless, it repeats number 3. The Duke of
Argyll says of his article that it "has done what I intended it to do.
It has called wide attention to the influence of mere authority in
establishing erroneous theories and in retarding the progress of
scientific truth."
(5) The Duke of Argyll illustrates the influence of his fictitious
"Reign of Terror" by the statement that Mr. John Murray "was strongly
advised against the publication of his views in derogation of Darwin's
long-accepted theory of the coral islands, and was actually induced to
delay it for two years" (p. 307). And in _Nature_ for the 17th November
1887, the Duke of Argyll states that he has seen a letter from Sir
Wyville Thomson in which he "urged and almost insisted that Mr. Murray
should withdraw the reading of his papers on the subject from the Royal
Society of Edinburgh. This was in February 1877." The next paragraph,
however, contains the confession: "No special reason was assigned." The
Duke of Argyll proceeds to give a speculative opinion that "Sir Wyville
{625} dreaded some injury to the scientific reputation of the body of
which he was the chief." Truly, a very probable supposition; but as Sir
Wyville Thomson's tendencies were notoriously anti-Darwinian, it does
not appear to me to lend the slightest justification to the Duke of
Argyll's insinuation that the Darwinian "terror" influenced him.
However, the question was finally set at rest by a letter which
appeared in _Nature_ (29th of December 1887), in which the writer says
that:
talking with Sir Wyville about "Murray's new theory," I asked what
objection he had to its being brought before the public? The answer
simply was: he considered that the grounds of the theory had not,
as yet, been sufficiently investigated or sufficiently
corroborated, and that therefore any immature, dogmatic publication
of it would do less than little service either to science or to the
author of the paper.
Sir Wyville Thomson was an intimate friend of mine, and I am glad to
have been afforded one more opportunity of clearing his character from
the aspersions which have been so recklessly cast upon his good sense
and his scientific honour.
(6) As to the "overthrow" of Darwin's theory, which, according to the
Duke of Argyll, was patent to every unprejudiced person four years ago,
I have recently become acquainted with a work, in which a really
competent authority,[184] thoroughly acquainted with all the new lights
which have been thrown upon the subject during the last ten years,
pronounces the judgment; firstly, that some of the facts brought
forward by Messrs. Murray and Guppy against Darwin's theory are not
facts; secondly, that the others are reconcilable with Darwin's theory;
and, thirdly, that the theories of Messrs. Murray and Guppy "are
contradicted by a series of important facts" (p. 13).
Perhaps I had better draw attention to the circumstance that Dr.
Langenbeck writes under shelter of the guns of the fortress of
Strassburg; and may therefore be presumed to be unaffected by those
dreams of a "Reign of Terror" which seem to disturb the peace of some
of us in these islands (April 1891).
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