fails, nor the most skilful art of mariners, could preferve the ftouteft fhips from perdition, even had the tempeft lafted as many days as it did months. The ark alone was under the guidance and protection of the Almighty, and God probably directed it to be built in an unusual shape without art, that Noah might be fenfible that in him along he was to place his whole confidence and hopes of fafety. The patriarch himself, fhut up even from the fight of the dreadful ruin which furrounded him, was totally paffive and inactive. Navigation has ever been one of the firft and moft fuccefsful attempts of the moft fivage people inhabiting fea-coafts; and for a small number of perfons their boats and canoes have been ever found fufficiently ingenious and well adapted to the nature of the adjoining feas. We can have no reason to fuppofe that the antediluvians were immerfed in favage ignorance. Adam was inftructed by God himfelf, and he was foon furrounded by a numerous progeny. The longevity of his race not only was calculated to preferve but to improve every knowledge that men acquired. The earth, though curfed after the fall, yet produced, with little labour: all its climates were moderate, and mankind had yet full leifure to employ himself in arts and study. How happens it that in the new world we yet fee to many nations profoundly ignorant? As I before obferved, thofe tribes who travelled not far from the place of feparation at the difperfion forgot not their former arts, but fat down in fociety in fertile countries and in happy climates; but thofe who wandered to great diftances, efpecially towards the north, foon got entangled amidit vaft forefts and moraffes, and feparated, in queft of fcanty food, into very finall parties. Many of them loft their heids and flocks, and were reduced to live on fpontaneous roots, or to earn their food by hunting, which feparated them ftill more from intercourfe with each other. In fuch a courfe of life these isolated families foon loft all remembrance of former arts or knowledge, and habit endeared this favage independence to them. In the antediluvian world, in which all excefies of heat or cold were yet unknown, where every clime was fruitful and benign, no fuch caufe of brutal degeneration could take place. If the lands were, as I have defcribed, interfected by frequent but comparatively

fall feas, undisturbed by high tides or violent tempefts, very little art in hip-building or navigation was neceffary; and it fcarce can be imagined that mankind could fubfift above fixteen centuries, without taking poffeffion of that agreeable and convenient part of his domains. In thofe tranquil and lefs extenfive feas the fimpleft fails would fuffice. Though the air was unagitated by hurricanes or tempefts, it was not ftagnant; and both fome kind of fails and directing rudders would be neceflary. In general, fome fort of galley with oars and fails in the fimpleft form would be fufficient for fhort trips on calm feas. Even fhould the picture both Mr. Wallerius and I have drawn of the afpect of the antediluvian world be imaginary and falfe, it is not probable that the advantages of navigation fhould have been fo long neglected..

(b) Page 533.

It seems to me that the great features of the deluge are in general imperfectly conceived or little attended to. We judge of it from partial inunda, tions, which may happen in particular countries. Inceffant rains, attended with violent hurricanes, driving part of the waters of the fea beyond their bounds, joined perhaps to the breaking down of the mounds of lakes, may, for a short time, inundate the low grounds of exten.five tracts. But how fhall we, with fuch means, imagine the whole earth to have been overflown for 150 days, without any decreafe in the inundating waters ? Rains and the whole water of the atmosphere are inadequate; and the waters of the former feas could not anfwer the purpofe. They could not totally have deferted their own beds and left them dry, to fpread themselves over the higher land, fo as to overtop all the eminences of the earth, however diminutive in comparison of our prefent mountains; much lefs could they maintain themselves in that unnatural elevation, whilft lower parts remained unfilled. But let us advert that the fountains of the great abyfs were at the fame time broken up. The fame quantity of water, no doubt, existed then as now; but the land was probably more extenfive in proportion to the fea. Great refervoirs of water ftill remain under the earth; before the 5. deluge,

deluge, a much greater portion was hidden under its furface. When this was rent by earthquakes and volcanos, thefe waters burft forth (as yet fometimes happens during earthquakes) with a force which we fee feebly imitated in water-works, and added to the flood a quantity of water perhaps not very unequal to that of the former feas. The waters had prevailed upon the earth during 150 days, when they were commanded to fubfide. How was this effected? Where did they retire to? In my conception, new convulfions now took place, by which hitherto-untouched inferior caverns were burft open, fwallowing up vaft portions of the former land, and thus gradually preparing new, deeper, and more extenfive beds in the present ocean, to receive their fuperabundance. It was then that the waters were hurried backwards and forwards, as the fcripture tells us, rufhing this way or that, towards new gulphs and cavities, fucceffively opened to receive them in various parts of the earth's circumference. From the effects of fuch tremendous agitations, can we be furprised to find the fpoils either of the fea or of former continents promifcuoufly fcattered over, and often deep-buried under, the furface of the earth? By the finking in of the whole land around the antarctic pole, to form one vaft though fhallow fea, the globe became more confolidated in that part; the centre of gravity was thereby changed, and the track of the earth diverged from the equinoctial line. The fhock thence occafioned must also have had mighty effects, and, though the lands of the northern hemifphere ftood firmer, it may have drawn after it the total disrupture of its continents and the formation of the Pacific and Atlantic feas. The whole bed of the present ocean was at length completed. The cavities which had been opened by thefe repeated convulfions under our remaining continents and islands were filled up by the fliding in of great portions of the furface on one hand, whilft, on the other, it was in many places elevated far above all former Jevel. New chafms and caverns were formed amidst thefe ruins, into which the remaining waters ran, to fill ftill fubfifting refervoirs within the bowels of the earth, and totally to liberate its furface.

(c) Page

(c) Page 535.

Whoever has travelled through mountainous countries must have obferved them traverfed in fome parts by narrow chafms, where the rugged faces of impending rocks with correfponding ftrata frown at each other, and in others, by valleys prefenting, on one fide at least, if not on both, the floping declivities of mountain-backs. There we fee the fracture itself which rent thofe rocks afunder: the ancient level has there been high uplifted into air: here we behold them dipping into the bowels of the earth, to fill up fome deep cavern burft open under them. If in the plain a fhaft is funk, we fhall find the fame ftrata as appeared on the face of the precipice dipping under ground, in the very fame order and with the fame inclination as down the mountain's back. If one or more of the fuperior ftrata are wanting, either on the declivity or within the earth, it is because they have flipped off in the fall; and their confused ruins will be found to form the foil at the point of junction between the hill and the plain. Mr. Whitehurft, in his inquiry into the original state of the earth, has given plates, in which are delineated these inclined ftrata from the tops of the mountains, where they appear in open day, to the greatest depths penetrated by mining in Derbyshire and the north of Ireland. When the convulfion which occafioned these effects was confined to fmall corners of a country, the delineation is easily followed: but where vaft portions of the earth have been at once affected-as, for example, the continent of South America, from the height of the Andes, to meet the bottom of the Atlantic ocean at feveral hundred leagues diftance-the traces of the whole are difficult to be feized. The difficulty is ftill greater, because the general inclined plane is frequently interrupted by the effects of partial fiffures incident to fuch a shock producing a variety of intermediate breaks and inequalities. If the opera. tions of partial accidents are difcoverable on many parts of the inclined plane, the much stronger effects of the general fhock which overturned the fite of the whole country are ftill more frequent and more visible amongst the ftupendous mountains elevated by it on the western coaft of that conti4 D

nent,

nent, dividing them into various chains and fractured portions. Such feems to have been the convulfion which at once changed the whole face of the earth, excavating new, deeper, and more extenfive feas, fhaking the foundations of remaining continents, and elevating plains or little eminences. to the ftupendous height of our prefent mountains. In the vicinity of moun-tains, there are other obfervations confirmative of this their origin frequently to be made. The waters, which at the deluge covered the whole earth and its comparatively low eminences, ran not quietly off towards the newly depreffed and enlarged bed of the ocean. Innumerable explosions on every fide agitated them to a degree which imagination cannot picture. In thofe parts where our mountains are now reared, whether former feas, plains, or hills, they were fuddenly and violently thrown off from the rifing. heights, and their impetuofity and ravages were proportionably great.. Wherever the foil was lefs firm, or fiffures gave an opening, they tore up and excavated deep ravines. Where these are found, particularly in fuchranges as are overtopped by ftill higher mountains, we generally fee mounts formed in a conical fhape at the foot of these hollowed clifts, fideways indeed to leave a paffage to the torrent towards the lower plains and the fea, but always on the higher fide. These were formed by the rubbish torn from out of these channels, and, as would naturally be the cafe, are gradually leffened towards their fummits, as the muddy torrent subsiding furnished fewer materials. This observation seems to have been first made by Mr. de Maillet in his Telliamed. Remarkable inftances of this are to be feen in travelling from Brough under Stanemore towards Penrith. On the right-hand fide, where a leffening chain of mountains are prolonged from Stanemore and from Crofsfell, which overtops them from behind, there are feveral fuch water-worn ravines, having each on the fide towards Brough its conic mount, higher towards Brough, and gradually lefs elevated towards Penrith and the fea. That fuch deep channels fhould, as Dr. Hutton wishes to perfuade us, have been worn out through beds of rock by their prefent fcanty rills, in whatever fancied number of ages, is too abfurd to think of. Whatever their waters do corrode is much more than compen❤

fated