Page images
PDF
EPUB

not an inundation from the southeast drive the ark north-west to the mountains of Armenia? These conjectures are at least consistent with the most probable notions of the primitive habitation of man, which I take to be near the sources of the Ganges (as Josephus expressly mentions), the Bourampooter and the Indus, from which, as the temperature grew colder, mankind descended to the plains of India.

"This unparalleled revolution, Moses informs us, was introduced by a continual rain for forty days. By this the surface of the earth must have been loosened to a considerable depth; its effects may even have been in many instances destructive; thus in August 1740 several eminences were swept away, nay the whole mountain of Lidsheare, in the province of Wermeland in Sweden, was rent asunder by a heavy fall of rain for only one night. 27 Schwed. Abband, 93. This loosening and opening of the earth was in many places where the marine inundation stagnated an useful operation to the soil subsequently to be formed, as by these means shells and other marine exuviæ were introduced into it, which rendered it more fertile. By this rain also the salt-water was diluted, and its pernicious effects both to soil and fresh-water fish in great measure prevented. The destruction of animals served the same purposes, and might, in many instances, be necessary to fertilise a soil produced by the decomposition of pri. mary mountains; from the animals thus destroyed the phosphoric acid found in many ores may have originated.

"But the completion of this catastrophe was undoubtedly effected, as Moses also states, by the invasion of the waters of the great abyss,

most probably, as I have said, that immense tract of ocean stretching from the Philippine islands, or rather from the Indian continent on the one side to Terra-Firma on the other, and thence to the southern pole, and again from Buenos Ayres to New Holland, and thence to the pole. Tracing its course on the eastern part of the globe, wè shall see it impelled northwards with resistless impetuosity against the continent which at that time probably united Asia and America. This appears to have been torn up and swept away (except the islands that still remain) as far north as latitude 40°; its further progress appears to have been somewhat checked by the lofty mountains of China and Tartary, and those on the opposite American coast; here then it began to dilate itself over the collateral countries; the part checked by the Tartarian mountains forming, by sweeping away the soil, the desert of Coby, while the interior or middle torrent pressed forward to the pole; but the interior surge being still more restricted by the contiguous, numerous, aud elevated mountains of eastern Siberia and America, must at last have arisen to a height and pressure which overbore all resistance, dashing to pieces the heads of those mountains, as Patrin and Steller remark, and bearing over them the vegetable and animal spoils of the more southern, ravaged or torn-up continents, to the far extended and inclined plains of western Siberia, where its free expansion allowed it to deposit them. Hence the origin of the bones and tusks of elephants and rhinoceri found in the plains, or inconsiderable sandy or marly eminences in the north-western parts of Siberia, as Mr. Pallas rightly judges.

"If now, returning to the south,

we

we contemplate the effects of this overwhelming invasion on the more southern regions of India and Arabia, we shall, where the coasts were undefended by mountains, discover it excavating the gulphs of Nanquin, Tonquin and Siam, the vast bay of Bengal and the Arabic and Red seas. That the southern capes, promontories and headlands, were extenuated to their present shape by the deluge, and not by tides or the currents still observed in those seas, may be inferred from the inefficacy of those feebler powers to produce any change in them for many past centuries.

on the south, and the Ouralian mountains on the west, and the circumpolar mountain on the side of Greenland. Hence the excavations observed on the northern parts of the former, and the abrupt declivities on the eastern flanks of the latter, while the western discover none. New reinforcements from the south-east must at length have surmounted all obstacles; but the subsequent surges could not have conveyed such a quantity of shells or marine productions as the first, and hence, though many are found on the more northern plains, scarce any are found on the great Altaischan elevation.

"The mass of waters now collected and spread over the Arctic regions, must have descended partly southwards over the deserts of Tartary, into countries with which we are too little acquainted to trace its ravages: but from the opposition it must have met in these mountain

"The chief force of the inundation seems to have been directed northwards in the meridians of from 110 to 200 east of London. In the more western tracts it appears to have been weaker; the plains of India I suspect to have been less ravaged, or perhaps their subsequent fertility may have been occa-ous tracts, and the repercussion of sioned by the many rivers by which that happy country is watered, Not so those of Arabia; their solid basis, resisting the inundation, was obliged to yield its looser surface, and remains even now a sandy desert, while the interior more mountainous tracts, intercepting, and thus collecting, the washed-off soil, are, to this day, celebrated for their fertility. 2 Niebuhr, 45 and 320. Irish edition. To a similar transportation of the ancient vegetable soil, the vast sandy deserts of Africa, and the barrenness of most of the plains of Persia, may be attributed.

"The progress of the Siberian inundation once more claims our attention; that it must have been here for some time stationary may be inferred from its confinement between the Altaischan elevation

their craggy sides, eddies must have been formed to which the Caspian, Euxine, and other lakes, may have owed their origin. Part also must have extended itself over the vast tracts west of the Ourals, and there expanded more freely over the plains of Russia and Poland down to latitude 52°, where it must have met with and be opposed by the inundation originating in the western parts of the pacific ocean, this side the Cape of Good Hope, and thence impelled northwards and westwards in the same manner as the eastern inundation already described, but with much less force, and sweeping the continents of South America (if then emerged), and of Africa, conveying to Spain, Italy and France, and perhaps still farther north, elephants and other animals and vegetables hitherto sup

posed

posed partly of Indian and partly sion and absorption unexampled,

of American origin.

"That the course here assigned is not imaginary appears from the shells, vegetables, and animal remains of those remote climates, still found in Europe, and from the discovery both of the European and the American promiscuously mixed with each other at Fez. 1 Berginan Erde Kugel, 252, 249.

"So also in Germany, Flanders, and Englan, the spoils of the northern climates, and those of the southern also, are equally found; thus the teeth of arctic bears and bones of whates, as well as those of animals of more southern origin, have been discovered in those parts.

"The effect of the encounter of such enormous masses of water, rushing in opposite directions, must have been stupendous: it was such as appears to have shaken and shattered some of the solid vaults that supported the subjacent strata of the globe. To this concussion I ascribe the formation of the bed of the Atlantic from latitude 20° south up to the north pole. The bare inspection of a map is sufficient to show that this vast space was hollowed by the impression of water; the protuberance from Cape Frio to the river of the Amazons, or la Plata in South America, corresponding with the incavation on the African side from the river of Congo to Cape Palmas; and the African protuberance from the Straits of Gibraltar to Cape Palmas, answering to the immense cavity between New York and Cape St. Roque. The depression of such a vast tract of land cannot appear improbable when we consider the shock it must have received, and the enormous load with which it was charged. Nor is such depres

since we have had frequent instances of mountains swallowed up, and some very lately in Calabria.

"The wreck of so considerable an integrant part of the globe must of necessity have convulsed the adjacent still subsisting continents previously connected with it, rent their stony strata, burst the still more solid masses of their moun tains, and thus in some cases formed, and in others prepared, the insular state to which these fractured tracts were reduced; to this event therefore I think may be ascribed the bold steep and abrupt western coasts of Ireland, Scotland and Norway, and the numerous isles that border them, as well as many of those of the West Indies. The Britannic islands seem to have acquired their insular state at a later period, though it was probably prepared by this event; but the basaltic masses on the Scotch and Irish coasts and those of Feroc appear to me to have been rent into pillars by this concussion.

"During this elemental conflict, and the crash and ruin of the submerged continent, many of its component parts must have been reduced to atoms, and dispersed through the swelling waves that usurped its place. The more liquid bitumens must by the agitation have intimately mixed with them. They must also have absorbed the fixed air contained in the bowels of the sunk continent; and further, by this vast continental depression, whose derelinquished space was occupied by water, the level of the whole diluvial ocean must have been sunk, and the summits of the highest mountains must then have emerged. In this state of things it is natural to suppose that if iron abounded in the submerged conti

nent,

ment, as it does at this day in the northern countries of Sweden, Norway and Lapland adjacent to it, its particles may have been kept in solution by the fixed air, and the argillaceous, siliceous and carbonaceous particles may have been long suspended. These muddy waters mixing with those impregnated with bitumen, the following combinatious must have taken place: 1°. If carbonic matter was also contained in the water, this uniting to the bitumen must have run into masses no longer suspensible in water, and formed strata of coal. 24o. The calces of iron by the contact of bitumen were in great measure gradually reduced, and together with the argillaceous and siliceous precipitated on the summits of several of the mountains not yet emerged, and thus formed basaltic masses, that during desiccation split into columns; in other places they covered the carbonaceous masses already deposited, and by absorbing much of their bitumen rendered them less inflammable, and hence the connexion which the sagacious Werner observed between basalts and coal. The fixed or oxygen air, erupting from many of them, formed those cavities, which being filled by the subsequent infiltration of such of their ingredients as were superfluous to their basaltic state, formed chalcedonies, zeoliths, olivins, basaltines, spars, &c. Hence most of the mountains of Sweden that afford iron, afford also bitumen., Hence also the asphalt found with trap, and under basalts, and in balls of chalcedony found in trap.

"This I take to be the last scene of this dreadful catastrophe, and hence no shells are found in these basalts, they having been previous ly deposited, though some other Fighter marine vegetable remains

have sometimes been found in them; some argillaceous or sandstone strata may also have been deposited at this period.

"On this account however of the formation of the basalts which crown the summits of several lofty peaks, I lay no more stress than it can justly bear; I deliver it barely as an hypothesis more plausible than many others.

"It has been objected to the Mosaic account that the countries near Ararat are too cold to bear olive trees. Tournefort, who first made this objection, should recollect, that at this early period the Caspian and Euxine seas were joined, as he himself has well proved. This circumstance surely fitted a country lying in the 38th degree of latitude to produce olives (which now grow in much higher latitudes), at present chilled only by its distance from the sea.

"A more plausible objection arises from the difficulty of collecting and feeding all the various species of animals now known, some of which can exist only in the hottest, and others only in the coldest climates; it does not however appear to me necessary to suppose that any others were collected in the ark but those most necessary for the use of man, and those only of the graminivorous or granivorous classes, the others were most probably of subsequent creation. The universality of the expressious, Gen. chap. vi. ver. 19. Of every living thing,

[ocr errors][merged small][ocr errors][ocr errors][merged small]

nivorous animals are meant.
this early period ravenous animals
were not only not necessary, but
would have been even destruc-
tive to those who had just ob-
tained existence, and probably not
in great numbers. They only be-
came necessary when the graminivo-
rous had multiplied to so great a
degree that their carcasses would
have spread infection. Hence they
appear to me to have been of pos-
terior creation; and to this also I
attribute the existence of those that
are peculiar to America and the tor-
rid and frigid zones.

At perhaps the longevity of the antediluvians may in great measure be attributed. After the flood the state of things was perfectly reversed, the surface of the earth was covered with dead and putrifying landanimals and fish, which copiously absorbed the oxygenous part of the atmosphere and supplied only mephitic and fixed air; thus the atmosphere was probably brought to its actual state, containing little more than one-fourth of pure air and nearly three-fourths of mephitic. Hence the constitution of men must have been weakened, and the lives of their enfeebled posterity gradually reduced to their present standard. To avoid these exhalations it is probable that the human race continued for a long time to inhabit the more elevated mountainous tracts. Domestic disturbances in Noah's family, briefly mentioned in holy writ, probably induced him to move with such of his descendants as were most attached to him to the regions he inhabited before the flood, in the vicinity of China, and hence the early origin of the Chinese monarchy."

"The atmosphere itself must have been exceedingly altered by the consequences of the flood. Soon after the creation of vegetables, and in proportion as they grew and multiplied, vast quantities of oxygen must have been thrown off by them into the then existing atmosphere without any proportional counteracting diminution from the respiration or putrifaction of animals, as these were created only in pairs, and multiplied more slowly; hence it must have been much purer than at present; and to this circumstance

OBSERVATIONS on the PHYSICAL and POLITICAL GEOGRAPHY of NORTH AFRICA, by JAMES RENNEL, Esq. F.R.S.

[From GEOGRAPHICAL ILLUSTRATIONS of Mr. PARK'S JOURNEY in the PROCEEDINGS of the AFRICAN ASSOCIATION, 1793.}

"T%

O our view, North Africa appears to be composed of three distinct parts, or members. The first and smallest is a fertile region along the Mediterranean, ly jag opposite to Spain, France and Italy (commonly distinguished by the name of Barbary); and which,

could we suppose the western basin of the Mediterranean to have once been dry land (bating a lake or recipient for the surrounding rivers), might be regarded as a part of Europe; as possessing much more of the European than the African character.

"The

« PreviousContinue »