Part 52

24. “And the waters prevailed upon the earth an hundred and fifty days.”

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.

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.

EPILOGUE.

Having considered the past history of the globe, we may now be permitted to bestow a glance upon the future which awaits it.

Can the actual state of the earth be considered as definitive? The revolutions which have fashioned its surface, and produced the Alps in Europe, Mount Ararat in Asia, the Cordilleras in the New World--are they to be the last? In a word, will the terrestrial sphere for ever preserve the form under which we know it--as it has been, so to speak, impressed on our memories by the maps of the geographers?

It is difficult to reply with any confidence to this question; nevertheless, our readers will not object to accompany us a step further, while we express an opinion, founded on analogy and scientific induction.

What are the causes which have produced the present inequalities of the globe--the mountain-ranges, continents, and waters? The primordial cause is, as we have had frequent occasion to repeat, the cooling of the earth, and the progressive solidification of the external crust, the nucleus of which still remains in a fluid or viscous state. These have produced the contortions, furrows, and fractures which have led to the elevation of the great mountain-ranges and the depression of the great valleys--which have caused some continents to emerge from the bed of ocean and have submerged others. The secondary causes which have contributed to the formation of a vast extent of dry land are due to the sedimentary deposits, which have resulted in the creation of new continents by filling up the basins of the ancient seas.

Now these two causes, although in a minor degree, continue in operation to the present day. The thickness of the terrestrial crust is only a small fraction compared to that of the internal liquid mass. The principal cause, then, of the great dislocations of the earth’s crust is, so to speak, at our gates; it threatens us unceasingly. Of this the earthquakes and volcanic eruptions, which are still frequent in our day, give us disastrous and incontestable proofs. On the other hand, our seas are continually forming new land: the bed of the Baltic Sea, for instance, is gradually rising, in consequence of the deposits which will obviously fill up its area entirely in an interval of time which it might not be impossible to calculate.

It is, then, probable that the actual condition of the surface and the respective limits of seas and continents have nothing fixed or definite in them--that they are, on the contrary, open to great modifications in the future.

There is another problem much more difficult of solution than the preceding, but for which neither induction nor analogy furnish us with any certain data--viz., the perpetuity of our species. Is man doomed to disappear from the earth some day, like all the races of animals which preceded him, and prepared the way for his advent? Will a new glacial period, analogous to that which, during the Quaternary period, was felt so rigorously, again come round to put an end to his existence? Like the Trilobites of the Silurian period, the great Reptiles of the Lias, the Mastodons of the Tertiary, and the Megatheriums of the Quaternary epoch, is the human species to be annihilated--to perish from the globe by a simple natural extinction? Or must we believe that man, gifted with the attribute of reason, marked, so to say, with the Divine seal, is to be the ultimate and supreme term of creation?

Science cannot pronounce upon these grave questions, which exceed the competence, and extend beyond the circle of human reasoning. It is not impossible that man should be only a step in the ascending and progressive scale of animated beings. The Divine Power which has lavished upon the earth life, sentiment, and thought; which has given organisation to plants; to animals, motion, sensation, and intelligence; to man, in addition to these multiple gifts, the faculty of reason, doubled in value by the ideal--reserves to Himself perhaps in His wisdom the privilege of creating alongside of man, or after him, a being still more perfect. This new being, religion and modern poesy would present in the ethereal and radiant type of the Christian angel, with moral qualities whose nature and essence would escape our perceptions--of which we could no more form a notion than one born blind could conceive of colour, or the deaf and dumb of sound. Erunt æquales angelis Dei. “They will be as the angels of God,” says Holy Scripture, speaking of man raised to the life eternal.

During the Metamorphic epoch the mineral kingdom existed alone; the rocks, silent and solitary, were all that was yet formed of the burning earth. During the Primary epoch, the vegetable kingdom, newly created, extended itself over the whole globe, which it soon covered from pole to pole with an uninterrupted mass of verdure. During the Secondary and Tertiary epochs, the vegetable and animal kingdoms divided the earth between them. In the Quaternary epoch the human kingdom appeared. Is it in the future destinies of our planet to receive yet another lord? And after the four kingdoms which now occupy it, is there to be a new kingdom created, the attributes of which can never be anything but an impenetrable mystery, and which will differ from man in as great a degree as man differs from the other animals, and plants from rocks?

We must be contented with suggesting, without hoping to solve, this formidable problem. It is a great mystery, which, according to the fine expression of Pliny, “lies hidden in the majesty of Nature,” latet in majestate naturæ; or (to speak more in the spirit of Christian philosophy) it is known only to the Almighty Creator of the Universe.