reftrial and marine animals, ceafing to exift without the tropics, which exifted there previously; and even in the extinction of fome fpecies of the latter. 12. I muft ftill recall to your mind a very important fact, now uncontrovertible in meteorology, and of which I have treated in many of my works, namely, that rain is not, (as it was commonly thought) merely the condenfation (owing to cold) of the water raifed into the atmosphere by evaporation. By fome means, connected with the rays of the fun, the vapours afcending in the atmosphere, are gradually converted into air; for they difappear to the teft of the hygrometer, which, however, as long as they do not change their nature, indicated not only their prefence, but their quantity. Rain then is produced, by the decompofition of a certain quantity of atmospherical air, operated by fome fluid, which probably proceeds from the furface of the earth: that portion of decompofed air fuddenly returns to the state of vapour, which being too denfe for fubfifting all together, is decompofed itself, firft into clouds, then into rain. This is a material point in the natural philofophy of the earth, of which I have treated at length in my works on this fubject. 13. I now return to the Deluge. The rain of forty days, and forty nights, defcribed by Moses, as an extraordinary phænomenon, was one of the effects of the change that was operated in the atmofphere by the elaftic fluids, that efcaped from the internal caverns at the beginning of the catastrophe; and this was the prelude to those meteorological operations which brought the atmosphere into its prefent ftate. But from this extraordinary fall of water refulted only a first inundation of the habitable parts of the globe, and MOSES does not confine himself to this caufe only; for he brings into action the fountains of the abyss, which, according to the language of scripture means the fea. These are the caufes which Moses indicates only in a few words; we fhall however trace their characteristic effects in his, fo remarkably fimple, narrative of this great event. 14. After thefe words, [GENESIS, chap. vii. v. 17.] "And the Flood was forty days upon the earth; and the waters increased, and bare up the ark, and it was lift up above the earth." (Which part relates only to the continuance of the effect of the rain, and which would have been the end of the inundation if the rain alone had been to produce it ;) it is faid [vv. 18, 19] "And the waters prevailed, and were increased greatly upon the earth. And the ark went upon the face of the waters. And the waters prevailed exceedingly upon the earth; and all the high hills, that were under the whole beaven, were covered." This expreffion, "under the whole heaven," fignifies only the whole horizon of the inhabited lands; for the phericity of the earth was then, and for a long time afterwards, unknown to its inhabitants. 15. It was then by the extraordinary rain which fucceeded the difruption of the caverns under the lands that were on the point of being destroyed, that the ark was fet afloat: after which these lands funk by degrees, and the fea flowed in from all parts; by which cause, though the rain had ceafed," the waters prevailed and were increased greatly upon the earth." It was thus that all the mountains of these parts of the earth were fubmerged, and even overthrown into the ca. verns; and the ark would have been carried along by fome of the currents and ingulfed with it, had it not been for the divine interpofitim, which is the principal point with Moses, in his narration, and the emblems of which are found in all the monuments of ancient Mythology. The ark then floated miraculously against the currents of the fea, and being borne up towards the place that it was abandoning, while it covered it, refted upon one of its islands, which foon after became one of the mountains of the new continents. Thus, with the help of Geology, we already trace in this part of Moses' concife narrative, what that fea was which flowed in to cover the ancient lands and now, by confulting Natural Hiftory, we shall find alfo in the rest of that nartative, that the retreat of water there mentioned, was that of the fea, which abandoned its ancient bed. 16. I need not prove, that our continents have been the bed of the fea; there are not two opinions on this fubject among naturalifts, but we are to examine fome of the confequences of their becoming dry lands. When the fea changed its bed in the revolution of the Deluge, all the hollow parts which happened to be in the new lands, remained at firft full of its waters: but foon the waters that fell in rain were added to thefe; and in every part where the extent of land from whence these waters defcended into hollow places, was very great in comparison with the lowest fpace, whence it could not naturally come out, the fuperabundant water flowed over at the lower parts of that bafon, after having been mixed with the fea water that it contained; fo that by degrees the rain water took the place of the falt: and thus it is that in the greater part of our lakes, the water they contain is the fame as that of the rivers that flow in. But on thefe new continents, there were also vaft bafons, where the rain waters that came into them were not fufficient even to compenfate for the evaporation that took place at their furface; by which means the quantity of the original water was diminished, inftead of being augmented; and this decrease continued till the extent of the flagnant water became fo reduced, that there was an equilibrium between the water produced by the rains, and that which was carried off by evaporation, by which caufe the ftagnant quater remained falt. Such is indifputably the origin of our falt lakes, fuch as the Cafpian Sea; for all the fyftems that have been imagined to explain their faltnefs, as well as that of the fea, by fuppofing a continual lixiviation of the lands, and the calculations made accordingly, by which the antiquity of our continents appeared to be millions of years, have had the fame fate as thofe in which it was attempted to explain their formation by flow caufes: they have vanished before the direct proofs of the fmall antiquity of the prefent ftate of our globe. 17. Among the circumftances of the Deluge, thofe which regard NOAH himfelf, his family, and the ark, are the more important, as from thefe unbelievers have hitherto raised the moft fpecious objections in the minds of men as little informed as themfelves; but we shall find, on the contrary, from the increafe of real knowledge, that these very circumftances are thofe which moft confpicuously demonflrate that this narrative contains nothing but truck. 18. If Moses (as Deifts pretend) had only invented a Mythology, upon the model of thofe that exifted in his time, and from fome inconceivable motive, had affected to contradict them with regard to the antiquity of the new race of men, he would not, at the very firft outfet of his hiftory of that race, have committed fo grofs a mistake, as to make a dove bring to NOAH an olive leaf from a mountain; for the Ifraelites muft have known that this tree is never found on mountains; and by placing the Deluge at fo fhort a time back, he loft the means of covering his miftake, had it been one, with the veil of time. TOURNEFORT, in the defcription he has given of Ararat, as a Botanift, has not failed to mention, that no olive trees grow there; and this remark alone has made many unbelievers. Ararat, however, and the other mountains, were at the time of Moses in the fame ftate as they are now, and TOURNEFORT's remark would not have escaped the Ifraelites, or MOSES himfelf, had he been writing a fable, but he spoke of the epoch of the landing of NOAH on this mountains which, according to Geology, was a time when lefs than a year had elapfed fince it was an ifland in the former fea. I fhall remind you of the importance of this diftinction, after I have confidered fome other analagous circumftances in Mos Es' narrative. 19. We find chap. ix. v. 3. of GENESIS, that GOD faid to NOAH and his family after their defcent from the ark, " Every moving thing that liveth fhall be meat for you, even as the green herb have I given you all things." Does not this laft expreffion represent the family of NOAH as furrounded with verdure on ARARAT? If, however, Moses had been writing a fable, would he have again made the mistake of reprefenting as covered with verdure, the fummit of a mountain iffuing from those waters which had prevailed over the highef of them? It required but very little attention to judge, that in fuch a ftate of things, the family of NOAH, on their quitting the ark, would have found nothing but mud over the whole grounds. But the Ifraelites, to whom he addreffed himself, knew from their own traditions, that these parents of the new race of mankind found both herbs and trees on Ararat. 20. We further find at v. 20 of the fame chapter, "And NoлH began to be a husbandman, and he planted a vineyard." MOSES neither in this place, nor in any other part of his narration, aims at giving the hiftory of the Vegetation or Cultivation of these new Lands; and in fact it would have been unneceffary in addreffing himfelf to the Ifraelites of his times, fince they knew it from their tradition: the vine therefore is mentioned in this place, only because of the verse following, where, continuing to fpeak of NOAH, he adds, " and he drank of the wine and was drunken." A circumstance which gave occafion to the fetting forth the characters of his fons, and had confequently confiderable influence on the events that followed with refpect to this race of mankind: but we are no lefs here informed of two important facts; one, that NOAH found the vine on the fame mountain, whence the dove had brought the olive leaf, and which afterward reprefented as covered with verdure; the other, that he, immediately after his landing, applied himself to bufbandry, f bufbandry, one of the first acts of which was to tranfplant the wine into a place probably lower than where he first found it, 21. My attentive reader will already be able to foresee how geology ferves to explain thefe great points in the MOSAIC hiftory; but before we proceed to this commentary, 1 fhall fhow why, in giving his account of thefe circumftances as connected with the hiftory of NOAH and his family, he had no occafion to be more explicit than he has been. 22. We have feen in general, that the ancient mythologies were entirely founded on certain traditions of the deluge; thus we may be able to judge from thefe, what the Ifraelites must have known from their own particular traditions, and what therefore it was not neceflary that Moses fhould relate at large. Now, we first find in their emblems, and even among the objects of their worship, the dove flying towards the ark with a branch of olive. Moreover the great perfonage of whom thefe mythologies make mention as miraculously preferved from a flood, and as having offered up on a mountain the firft facrifice to the Supreme Being, (a circumftance mentioned by Moses in his account of NOAH) is fpoken of in them, under different names, as the first cultivator of the earth; he who first tamed the bull and fubmitted it to the yoke for ploughing; he who first planted the vine; and laftly, the firft inftructor of his race in arts. Here then we have all these circumftances mentioned tranfitorily by MoSES; the olive branch, the vine, the renewal of agriculture, and a firft facrifice on a mountain, preferved in the traditions of the Pa gans; and as these traditions were the only fource of their knowledge of past events, we fhall fee that they have further confecrated in their mythologies other circumstances which Moses, keeping close to the neceffary objects of his narration, did not happen to mention, as it was not neceflary to recall them to the memory of the Ifraelites, but which we shall find alfo confirmed by natural history. 23. MOSES, in his admirably fimple narratives, no where mentions, what geology enables us to comprehend, how greatly the fas mily of NOAH, as well as their immediate defcendants must have been ftruck in obferving how the high parts of mountains, stocked with animals as well as with plants, were ferving to propagate life around them on grounds which did not bear any appearance of having ever been dry lands. It must however be from their accounts that the Pagans had the above traditions, and in these accounts the influence of mountains must have been accompanied with very marvellous circumftances, to exalt the imaginations of their fucceffors (not of the family of Shem) fo much as to lead them to the conception and admiffion of certain beings, who had obtained from the Deity permiffion to churn the waters of the deluge by the whirling of a mountain, till the water of life was recovered, and that it came to flow down its fides to reanimate expiring nature. Here doubtless is a gigantic effort of imagination; but we fee the foundation of it in geology; there is, however, among thofe flights, a circumftance that at first appears as extravagant as the former, which I nevertheless confider as having been tranfmitted to them by their ancestors, as as they relate it; and it is fuch, that by ftrongly exciting their imagination, it must have had great influence in the production of their mythologies. In defcribing that violent agitation of the ocean, true in itself, though they affign it to a fabulous caufe, they mention that there iffued forth clouds of Smoke and torrents of fire. Now I have reason to believe, from the monuments of volcanic eruptions of which I have treated in my 4th Letter, that between the volcanic bills of our continents, many of those which are not encircled by fraza pro. duced in the fea, as well as many of the volcanic islands fcattered in feveral parts of our present fea, and which in many places form Archipelagos, were formed during the catastrophe of the Deluge, and that thus the family of NOAH witneffed thofe portentous fymptoms, and tranfmitted them to their pofterity; though MOSES makes no mention of them, any more than of the violent agitation of the water; because the Ifraelites knew of thefe facts from their own traditions, as much as the defcendants of HAM and JAPHET.His miffion was only for the purposes of clearing these traditions from the errors that the fancy of their ancestors also had mixed with them, and of fixing in their nation the real figns of the divine intervention in these events, relating especially to the earth and to mankind; an intervention, the memory of which, though preserved among them, was alfo mixed with the fanciful ideas of polytheifm. 24. We may now judge of what importance the works of Mr. BRYANT and of the Afiatic Society are for humanity in general, both in the prefent and in future ages; fince, by difclofing the real effence of the ancient mythologies, they have ferved to diffipate the obfcurity which, through the Jews' forgetfulness of their earliest traditions, hung over the book of GENESIS, even among themselves; and how much we are indebted to Mr. MAURICE, for having fupplied us with a collection of these fundamental and other documents in his Hiftory of Hindoftan, where we find, particularly at pp. 341-354, all the circumftances I have mentioned, together with the following, which, confidering this lofs of traditions among the Jews, is of very great importance to us. The fame perfonage who in thefe mythologies is pointed out to us by fo many characteristic traits to be NOAH, is still further commemorated in them, as having brought forth with him from his bark a quantity of feeds which he had there preferved in order to renew their races after the Deluge. Now, natural history alfo fupports this tradition; for we fee by experience, that the prefervation of the plants, most useful in our fields and gardens, depends on culture; they gradually perish if left to themselves, and are no longer to be found among the spontaneous plants. This tradition then, united with the dictates of natural hif tory, is a true ray of light, which difpels the illusions that falfe interpretations of the book of GENESIS have fucceffively produced; for we not only have here a new information, on the means by which vegetables were renewed after the Deluge; but we learn at the fame time, that even before that event, cultivation was neceffary for the prefervation of the fame plants on the old continents; a conclufion that agrees with the fentence pronounced to Adam on his being driven out |