PREFACE TO PART V.

I HAVE given in the body of this Part the scientific arguments, which show conclusively that no Deluge, such as that described in G.vi-viii,—whether regarded as a Universal or a Partial Deluge, -could ever have happened within an age extending vastly beyond the era of the Noachian Deluge. Among other matters, I have drawn special attention to the very decisive evidence afforded on this point by the actual state of the volcanic cones of Auvergne, as attested by the concurrent evidence of some of the most eminent geologists of the present day.

My statements have been challenged by one or more clergymen, writing in defence of the traditionary view.

It is denied that the volcanic hills in question are of such great antiquity, and in proof of this reference is made (i) to two letters from SIDONIUS APOLLINARIS, Bishop of Clermont, in Auvergne, (ii) to a homily of AVITUS, De Rogationibus, and (iii) to the History of GREGORY of Tours, from which it is inferred as follows:

It be will seen from these authorities that the last eruptions from these volcanoes, which were most severe, occurred in the reign of Gunderic, A.D. 460-2-that they threw up ashes and pumice in such vast quantities as fell in Sodomitic showers,' even in the vicinity of Vienne-that the three authors first above-named were contemporary and eyewitnesses, and that, from their continuance for nearly three years, entire new cones could hardly fail to be formed. . . . .

It further appears that a three days' fast and humiliation being held, to beseech the removal of these calamities, and being begged by Mamertus of all neighbouring churches, it came to be annually repeated, and copied throughout not only all Gaul, but also Britain, under the name of Rogation Days, the anniversary continued in our calendar to this hour.

I will first translate the following account of the institution of 'Rogation Days' from HOFFMAN's 'Lexicon,' iv. p. 77:

Days of Rogation, to be celebrated with prayers and fastings before the Ascension of Christ, were instituted on account of an earthquake and incursions of wild beasts, by Mamertus, Bishop of Vienne, A.D. 446. There are three of them which are celebrated before the Lord's Ascension, according to the custom of the Gallic church. The wild beasts by which the Gauls were then infested were chiefly wolves. When these raged fiercely against the Gauls, and no remedy could be found for this scourge, the bishops of the Gallic provinces, being collected at Vienne, appointed in common that they should implore the mercy of God by a three days' fast. When this turned out happily, it came to pass that these days came into a custom of annual celebration, which also at the present time are observed carefully through the provinces of Gaul for diverse calamities.

Thus, according to the above author, the institution of Rogation Days had no connection with 'volcanic eruptions,' but was due to an earthquake,' and chiefly the 'incursions of wild beasts' at Vienne. Vienne, however, is in Dauphiny, not in Auvergne, But the fact is, that there are no signs of any volcanic action whatever in or near to the city of Vienne, though there are in the

Vivarais, in the neighbouring department. As Dr. DAUBENY observes, 'Volcanoes,' 2nd edit., p. 66, Note :—

There are no volcanoes near Vienne; but the bishop's diocese may have extended into the neighbouring department of Ardêche, where they occur so abundantly. But the volcanoes in Auvergne and those in the Vivarais are two distinct groups, which, as the same authority tells us, p. 32,— although scarcely a hundred miles distant from each other, are nevertheless divided by a barrier of primary rocks, and belong apparently to independent systems.

To infer that the volcanoes of Auvergne were in a state of activity at the time when those of the Vivarais showed symptoms of disturbance, would be as rash as to presume that the extinct volcano of Mount Vultur, in Apulia, was roused into activity in the first century of the Christian era, because ancient writers have recorded the ravages made at that time by Vesuvius.

GREGORY of Tours died A.D. 595, more than 130 years after the phenomena, whatever they were, of A.D. 460-2, of which we are speaking. But, in truth, this writer does not speak of any ‘eruptions.' He says only, ii. Ep. 34 :

He (Avitus) relates in a certain homily which he wrote about Rogations, that these same Rogations, which we celebrate before the triumph of the Lord's Ascension, were instituted by Mamertus, bishop of the said city of Vienne, over which also he then presided, at a time when that city was terrified by many prodigies. For it was frequently shaken by an earthquake; and, moreover, the wild nature of deer and wolves having entered the gates, wandered (he wrote) about the whole city, fearing nothing. And when this occurred through the circle of a year, upon the approach of the days of the Paschal solemnity, the whole people were devoutly awaiting the mercy of God, that, at least, this day of great solemnity might bring an end to this terror. But on the very watch of the night of glory, while the solemnities of the mass were being celebrated, suddenly the royal palace within the walls is set in flames by divine fire. All being utterly terrified with fear, and having gone out of the church, believing that either all the city might be consumed by this conflagration, or certainly might yawn in chasms with the rending asunder of the earth, the holy priest, prostrate before the altar, with groans and tears implores the mercy of the Lord. Why more? The prayer of the renowned chief-priest penetrated the lofty regions of the sky, and the stream of flowing tears quenched the flames of the house.

It is plain that there is nothing here about 'Sodomitic showers.' Gregory speaks only of 'earthquakes,' the strange entrance of wild animals into the city, and the palace set in flames by divine fire, i.e., apparently by a stroke of lightning.

Secondly, AVITUS, the successor of Mamertus, who was really a 'contemporary and eyewitness,' writes as follows::

And, indeed, I know that many of us recollect the causes of the terrors of that time. Forsooth, frequent conflagrations, repeated earthquakes, nightly sounds, kept threatening a sort of prodigious graveyard for a kind of funeral of the whole world. For an appearance of wild animals in a state of tameness presented itself to large gatherings of people, God only knows whether deluding the eyes or drawn by portents; whichever, however, of these two was the case, it was understood to be equally monstrous, whether thus in reality the savage hearts of brutes could be softened, or the phantasms of false vision could be formed so horribly before the sight of terrified men. Meanwhile the feeling of the common people took different directions, and the opinions of different ranks were various. Some, dissembling what they thought, attributed to chance what they were unwilling to give to tears; others, of a better mind, interpreted each new portent by suitable significations of the fitness of the plagues. For who, amidst frequent fires, would not fear Sodomitic showers? Who, when the elements were trembling, would not believe that either the fall of the roof, or the disruption of the ground was imminent? Who, when he saw, or certainly thought he saw, deer, fearful by nature, penetrate through the narrow gates as far as the spacious forum, would not dread an impending feeling of desolation?

Here again there is no mention of 'Sodomitic showers,' as having been rained from heaven upon the city of Vienne, but of fires such as that of the palace struck by lightning, or others caused by the 'fall of the roofs' from repeated earthquakes, which brought to

mind the destruction of Sodom, and made the people dread a recurrence of 'Sodomitic showers.'

Lastly, the Letter of SIDONIUS, vii. Ep. 1, begins thus:

There is a rumour that the Goths have moved their camp into Roman soil. For to this irruption we, miserable people of Auvergne, are always the gate.

And he goes on to say that he depends for deliverance not upon earthly defences, but upon the Rogations, which had been instituted by Mamertus, and in which the people of Auvergne had begun to practise. He then proceeds :

For it does not escape our inquiries what kind of prodigies those were, under whose terrifying effect the city, committed from Heaven to your care, was being emptied in the first times, when these prayers were instituted. For now the sites of the public walls were shaken by frequent earthquakes; now fires, often with flames (ignes sæpe flammati), heaped up the fallen ridges of the roofs with a piled-up mountain of ashes; now the fearful tameness of audacious deer placed their portentous beds in the forum ; whilst thou meanwhile, the state of the city being thinned by the departure of the nobles and populace, quickly hadst recourse to a new example of the ancient Ninevites, lest thy despair also should mock the Divine admonition. And truly thou, least of all men, after experience of thy virtues, couldst distrust God without sin. For when once, by chance, the city had begun to burn, thy faith grew the hotter by that heat; and when in the sight of the fearful people, by the mere presentation of thy body, the fire struck back, wound its retreating way in fugitive curves, by a miracle, terrible, new, unwonted, it happened to the flame to give way through reverence, which by nature was devoid of feeling.

6

Here, again, we have mention made of earthquakes,' and of 'flaming fires, piling up ashes on the fallen roofs'; but there is nothing said of volcanic eruptions; and these fires seem to be the same as those mentioned by AVITUS, which were kindled by the roofs falling in upon the household fires, through repeated earthquakes. Accordingly Dr. DAUBENY says, in his 'Volcanoes: '

I submit to my readers whether the entire silence of SIDONIUS as to the existence of volcanoes in Auvergne, although his residence was on the borders of the Lake Aidat, which, as we have seen, was caused by an eruption from one of the most modern of those which had desolated the country, is not a strong negative evidence of their antiquity, especially when this author dwells in his poems on the scenery of his own neighbourhood, and even compares its natural beauties with those of Baiæ, a spot which he must have known, to be in the neighbourhood of a burning mountain. How natural would it have been for him, after he had said, with reference to his baths on the Lake of Aidat

High rise the heights like to the Baian cone,

Like too, with half-clothed summit, shines the peak,—

to have added that, in its vicinity too, as in that of Baiæ, there was a mountain vomiting forth flames, supposing any such phenomenon to have been familiar to him, near the spot where he resided!-p.33.

Although the testimony of SIDONIUS APOLLINARIS and of ALCIMUS AVITUS should persuade us that some indications of activity were manifested, about the fourth century after Christ, by the igneous agents that may be supposed to exist in the bowels of the earth at no great distance from the city of Vienne, yet it would seem more probable that the reports of these writers had reference to earthquakes than to true volcanic eruptions that occurred in this district.-p.66.

In the Athenæum, No. 1,020, we find the following report of a lecture by Sir CHARLES (then Mr.) LYELL:—

Before considering these, Mr. LYELL entered into a short digression to refute the doctrine of the mediaval origin of the volcanoes near Clermont (Auvergne), advanced by a writer in the Quarterly Review for October, 1844, p.295, where it is pretended that SIDONIUS APOLLINARIS, Bishop of Clermont, who flourished at the close of the fifth century, has borne explicit testimony to the volcanic eruption, the crumbling of the cones, and the heaping up of the showers of ashes and scoriæ, cast forth amidst their fires.' The passages relied on occur in a letter from SIDONIUS to his contemporary, Mamertus, Bishop of Vienne in Dauphiny, written when Auvergne was threatened with a fresh irruption of the Goths, to avert which danger the bishop proposes to adopt certain forms of prayer (rogations, or litanies), which Mamertus

had already introduced on the occasion of some 'prodigies,' which had happened in Dauphiny sixteen years before. In alluding to these phenomena SIDONIUS says that 'the walls of the city of Vienne were shaken by frequent earthquakes, many fires broke out, and mounds of ashes were heaped up over the falling copings of the walls.' Deer also took refuge in the forum, and the people fled; all but the bishop, who had a right to reckon on divine protection, because, as SIDONIUS reminds him, on a former occasion the flames at his approach had miraculously receded, out of reverence to his holy person. At the time of the earthquake he (Mamertus) had told his people that their repentant tears would extinguish the fires sooner than rivers of water, and the stedfastness of their faith would cause the rocking of the ground to cease. SIDONIUS finishes with asking the Bishop of Vienne to send him some relics to make all secure. The style of the whole epistle is so faulty, ambitious, and poetical, as to make it difficult to know the exact value of the expressions, and dangerous to found upon them any philosophical argument about natural events. There is not a word about Auvergne, but simply an allusion to the shocks which appear to have thrown down buildings (at Vienne) and caused (as usual in such cases, where roofs fall in) great conflagrations and heaps of cinders. The terror of the wild animals when the earth rocks, and their sensitiveness to the slightest movements, are well known. Although the epistle proves SIDONIUS to have had a fair share of the credulity of his age, both in respect of miracles wrought in favour of a contemporary saint, and the efficacy of relics, it would be unfair to charge him with a belief in the occurrence of a volcanic eruption at or near the site of the city of Vienne, which the investigations of the ablest government surveyors, to whom the construction of a geological map of France has been entrusted, have entirely disproved. There are, in fact, no monuments of volcanos, ancient or modern, in Dauphiny; and, if there had been, they would not throw light on the date of eruptions in Auvergne.

Sir CHARLES LYELL writes thus also in his Elements of Geology, 6th Ed. p.684:

The brim of the water of the Puy de Pariou near Clermont is so sharp, and has been so little blunted by time, that it scarcely affords room to stand upon. This and other cones in an equally remarkable state of integrity have stood, I conceive, uninjured, [by ordinary rain, but not by the waters of a Deluge,] not in spite of their loose porous nature, as might at first be rationally supposed, but in consequence of it. No rills can collect where all the rain is absorbed by the sand and scoriæ, as is remarkably the case on Etna; and nothing but a waterspout breaking directly upon the Puy de Pariou, [or the waters of a Deluge surging upon it,] could carry away a portion of the hill, so long as it is not rent or engulphed by earthquakes.

Hence it is conceivable that even those cones, which have the freshest aspect and most perfect shape, may lay claim to very high antiquity. Dr. DAUBENY has justly observed that, had any of these volcanos been in a state of activity in the age of Julius Cæsar, that general, who encamped upon the plains of Auvergne, and laid siege to its principal city (Gergovia, near Clermont), could hardly have failed to notice them. Had there being any record of their eruptions in the time of PLINY or SIDONIUS APOLLINARIS, the one would scarcely have omitted to make mention of it in his Natural History, nor the other to introduce some allusion to it among the descriptions of this his native province. This poet's residence was on the borders of the Lake Aidat, which owed its very existence to the damming up of a river by one of the most modern lava-currents.

Lastly, the reader will observe that nothing would be proved against the scientific evidence of the impossibility of the Noachian Deluge as a matter of fact, if it could even be shown that some of these volcanic cones are of more recent date. If there is one ancient cone-and Sir CHARLES LYELL, as quoted below in (1180), says there are many-composed of 'loose ashes,' 'an incoherent heap of scoriæ and spongy ejectamenta,' which still 'stands unmolested,' it is plain that no 'Noah's Flood' can have covered the earth, when, as the same authority has stated—

Had the waters once risen, even for a day, so high as to reach the level of the base of one of these cones,-had there been a single Flood 50 or 60 feet in height since the last eruption occurred,-a great part of these volcanoes must inevitably have been swept away.

LONDON: Feb. 24, 1865.

J. W. NATAL.