of the waters. The Ark went 15 cubits deep: | his daughter, and the pilot. They erected an and so, at the moment when it grounded, the water also reached the height of 15 cubits over the top of Ararat. If this be so, then the statement in v.19, that all the high hills that were under the whole heaven' were covered by the waters, must not be understood literally in the sense of universal.

STORIES OF THE FLOOD AMONG OTHER only narrated by later writers. Neither Ho

the Hellenic deluge appears to have been the | In every instance the legend was transplanted annihilation of the brazen race, which ac- by the people who relate it to their own cording to HESIOD perished without any Flood. country. Himalaya, Ararat, and Parnassus, The race, which was destroyed, had acted occupy the same place in one set of myths, as wickedly, disregarded oaths and the rights of Meru, Albordj, and Olympus do in the others. hospitality, attended to no expostulations, and The Hebrew legend alone removes it entirely in the end became necessarily punished. Ju- from Canaanitish soil, because the Israelites piter sent violent torrents of rain, and the constantly retained the conviction that they Earth, says LUCIAN, opened in order to let had not originally belonged to that country. the immense body of water run off. Deuca- The scene of their legend of the Flood was lion the only righteous man, entered the vessel the original home of their national forewhich he had made, with his wife Pyrrha fathers, which was to them an inheritance of [LUC. with his wives'], and according to primeval antiquity. the later form of the legend, took with him different kinds of animals in pairs. After nine days and nine nights he landed on the summit of Parnassus, which remained uncovered, PAUS.X.6;* while the greatest part of Greece was laid under water, so that only a few men, who had fled to the highest mountains, escaped alive. PLUTARCH, de Soll. Anim.xiii, t mentions the dove, which Deucalion employed to find out if the rain had

ceased or the heavens had become clear.

The Phrygian legend is similar, though we have only faint traces of it. Annakos, the Biblical Enoch, foretells the coming Flood; and coins of Apamea, of the time of Septimus Severus, A.D. 194-211, represent a floating vessel, in which a man and his wife may be discerned, whilst upon the vessel is a bird, and another is flying towards it, holding a twig in its claw. The same couple are seen standing on the dry land, with their right hands uplifted, and upon these specimens of the coin is the name NS2. This Phrygian legend must refer in some degree to a Flood, and it settled the landing place of the Floating Ark to be near Apamea, which bears the name of Ark.' The close coincidence, however, with the Biblical narrative, even in the occurrence of the name of Noah (N2), excites suspicion, and favours the presumption that this representation of the coins was derived from the Hebrew.

The same fundamental ideas are contained in all these legendary narratives of the Flood.

much water, and much rain fell, and the rivers came down in floods, and the sea rose to a great height, until all became water, and all perished. Only Deucalion was left of men for a second generation, on account of his prudence and piety. And this was the way in which he was preserved. He embarked his children and wives in a large Ark which he had. And, as he entered, there came to him swine, and horses, and different kinds of lions, and serpents, and whatever else lives in the Earth, by pairs. And he received them all, and they did him no harm, but great friendship existed between them by the will of Zeus. And in one Ark they all sailed so long as the water prevailed.

*And of the people, all, who were able to escape the storm, were saved through the howling of wolves, by escaping to the heights of Parnassus, following the beasts as guides of the way.'

Story-tellers say that a dove, sent out from the Ark, became a sign of tempest by returning in again, and of fine weather by having flown away.'

1194. The following lines are taken from Dean MILMAN'S translation of The Story of the Fish,' in Nala Damayanti and other Poems, p.114-15, where Manu is represented as addressed by Brahma in the form of a fish, as follows:

When the awful time approaches,-hear from me what thou must do.

In a little time, O blessed! all the firm and seated earth,

All that moves upon its surface,-shall a deluge sweep away.

Near it comes-of all creation the ablutionday is near;

Therefore, what I now forewarn thee, may thy highest weal secure.

All the fixed and all the moving,-all that stirs or stirreth not,

Lo! of all the time approaches, the tremendous time of doom.

Build thyself a ship, O Manu, strong, with
cables well prepared;

And thyself, with the seven sages, mighty
Manu, enter in.

All the living seeds of all things, by the
Brahmins named of yore,

Place them first within the vessel, well se-
cured, divided well.

Earth was seen no more, no region, nor the intermediate space;

All around a waste of water,-water all, and air, and sky.

In the whole world of creation, princely son of Bharata!

None was seen but those seven sages, Manu only and the fish.

Years on years, and still unwearied, drew that fish the bark along,

Till at length it came, where lifted Himavan its loftiest peak.

There at length it came, and, smiling, thus the fish addressed the sage:

To the peak of Himalaya bind thou now the
stately ship.'

At the fish's mandate quickly, to the peak of
Himavan

Bound the sage his bark, and ever to this day
that loftiest peak

Bears the name of Naubandhana, from the binding of the bark.

1195. We add here the following quotation from KENRICK, Primeval History, p.33:

It must appear very doubtful whether the

earliest mythology of the Greeks contained | been covered by the sea,-had lain there for

any reference to a destruction of the human
race by a Flood. But the coincidence of the
Babylonian, the Indian, the Mexican, and the
Jewish accounts, can hardly be explained,
without supposing a very high antiquity of
the Asiatic tradition, an antiquity preceding
our knowledge of any definite facts in the
history of these nations.
However
high we may be warranted to carry up the
existence of this tradition in Asia, it will not
necessarily follow that it was founded upon a
real fact.
There is abundant evidence
that the past changes of the globe, and the
fate of the human race as influenced by them,
have excited the imagination to speculate on
their causes and circumstances, and that these
speculations, assuming an historical form,
have been received as matter of fact. The
Mexicans believed in four great cycles,-the
first terminated by famine,-the second by
fire, from which only birds and two human
beings escaped,-the third by storms of wind,
which only monkeys escaped, the fourth by
water, in which all human beings save two
were changed into fishes; and to these cycles
they ascribed an united duration of 18,000
years. It was a popular legend among the
Greeks that Thessaly had once been a lake,
and that Neptune had opened a passage for
the waters through the Vale of Tempe.
The legend, no doubt, originated in a very
simple speculation. The sight of a narrow
gorge, the sole outlet to the waters of a whole
district, naturally suggests the idea of its
having once been closed, and, as the necessary
consequence, of the inundation of the whole
region which it now serves to drain. The in-
habitants of Samothrace had a similar tra-
ditionary belief, that the narrow strait by
which the Euxine communicates with the
Mediterranean was once closed, and that its
sudden disruption produced a Deluge, which
swept the sea-coast of Asia, and buried some
of their own towers. The fact of traces of
the action of water at a higher level in an-
cient times on these shores is unquestionable.
But that the tradition was produced
by speculation on its cause, not by an obscure
recollection of its occurrence, is also clear;
for it has been shown, CUVIER, Rev. du Globe,
p.87, by physical proofs, that a discharge of

the waters of the Euxine would not cause
such a Deluge as the tradition supposed.
The inhabitants of Polynesia have a tradition
that the islands, with which their ocean is
studded, are but the fragments of a continent
which once existed. In Greece, the continent
of Lyctonia was supposed to have been split
into the islands of the Mediterranean. The

inhabitants of the western part of Cornwall
have a tradition that the Scilly Islands were
once united to the mainland, by a tract now
submerged. In none of these instances does
any historical fact appear to lie at the foun-
dation of the tradition, even where, as in the
case last-mentioned, it is not in itself impro-
bable. If the tradition of a Deluge is more
widely spread than any of these, so also are
the phenomena on which it is founded.
The sand and shells,-which induced Hero-
dotus to believe, ii.12, that all Lower Egypt,
and even the hills above Memphis, had once

ages, before they drew his attention; and surely his was not the first reflecting mind that had speculated on their origin.

If, from these marks of the action of water on the Earth the notion of a Deluge arose, it would not only include, as a necessary consequence, the destruction of all living things, but also the guilt of the race which thus violently perished. No principle appears more universally to pervade the legends of early times than that great calamities implied great guilt. At Mavalipuram, on the coast of Coromandel, the remains of several ancient temples and other buildings, now close to the sea, suggested the idea that a splendid city had been buried under the waters. Such a calamity must have been inflicted by the gods as a punishment for some enormous crime; and this was found in the impiety of the tyrannical king, the great Bali. According to another account, the gods destroyed it, because its magnificence rivalled that of the celestial courts: see SOUTHEY'S Kehama,xv. It was on account of the wickedness of the Atlantians that Jupiter submerged their island and drowned the whole race.

A similar tale is related of an island near China, the impious inhabitants of which thus perished, while their righteous king escaped. The remains of buildings, or rocks which fancy has converted into such, seen through the transparent waters near the margin of lakes, have very generally given rise to legends of the destruction of towns for the wickedness of their inhabitants. Dr. ROBINSON, Trav. in Palest.,ii.589, mentions a tradition that a city had once stood in the desert between Petra and Hebron, the people of which had perished for their vices, and had been converted into stone. SEETZEN, who went to the spot, found no traces of ruins, but a number of stony concretions, resembling in form and size the human head. They had been ignorantly supposed to be petrified heads, and a legend framed to account for their owners suffering so terrible a fate.

1196. How easily legends grew up in those days, through pious speculations, with reference to ancient facts or memorials, the real meaning and true history of which was unknown, or had long been lost, may be gathered from one which JOSEPHUS, Ant.I.ii., sets forth, as being quite as much a piece of authentic history, as that of the Flood itself or the Tower of Babel:

Seth, when he was brought up, and came to those years, in which he could discern what was good, became a virtuous man; and, as he was himself of an excellent character, so did he leave children behind him, who imitated his virtues. All these proved to be of good dispositions. They also inhabited the same country without dissensions, and in a happy condition, without any misfortunes falling upon them, till they died. They also were the inventors of that peculiar sort of wisdom, which is concerned with the heavenly

women.

of Orinoko it was a pair of human beings, who cast behind them the fruit of a certain palm, and out of the kernels sprang men and Also the legends of a general Flood, among the Tahitians and other Society Islanders, betray an Asiatic origin, as generally much in this group of prople reminds us of India. The inhabitants of Raiatea show

bodies and their order. And, that these inventions might not be lost before they were sufficiently known, upon Adam's prediction that the world was to be destroyed at one time by the force of fire, and at another time by the violence and quantity of water, they made two pillars, the one of brick, the other of stone, and inscribed their discoveries on them both, that, in case the pillar of brick-as a proof that a flooding of the land once should be destroyed by the flood, the pillar of stone might remain, and exhibit those discoveries to mankind, and also inform them that there was another pillar of brick erected by them. Now this remains in the land of Siriad to this day.

1197. The ground of the latter part of the above legend may have been the fact of the existence of remarkable pillars, which are said to have been erected by Sesostris, king of Egypt, to commemorate his victories, not by Seth, son of Adam, and his descendants. And this part of the legend may have given birth to the former part, viz. that Adam made such a prediction. HERODOTUS writes of these, ii.106:

As to the pillars, which Sesostris, king of Egypt, erected in the different countries, most of them are no longer in existence; but in Syrian Palestine I myself saw some still remaining.

1198. DELITZSCH observes, p.242:The legends about the Flood, which are found in different nations, have just as much their corrective in the Biblical record, as this has in them a proof of its historical value. In them are similar fundamental portions, which form the basis of the heathen legends, only mythologically coloured, and altered in such a way, that the moral significance of the event retires into the background, the locality of the place of settlement is brought as near as possible, the horizon of an universal Flood contracts itself more or less in national, special, interests, and the forms of national common-life are carried back into the antedilavian time. Nearest to the Biblical record stand the Flood-legends of the West-Asiatic

circle of nations.

took place-the corals and mussels, which are found on the highest summits of the island.

1200. The inference, which DELITZSCH draws from the 'dove and raven' appearing in the mythology of Mexico and Cuba, viz., that these legends are all most probably derived from one primeval historical fact, would be justified, if the other chief details of the story were found repeated in these legends. Otherwise, it might be just as fairly argued that the primeval fact involved also the changing stones into men, which appears so prominent in these South American legends, as well as in that of the Greeks.

1201. In fact we can account for the

observed resemblance in one or other of these three ways:

(i) The different legends do point to one common primeval fact; but, if so, the 'stones' must have formed a feature in it quite as much as the 'birds';

(ii) The legends of the new World may have been derived from those of the Old; but, if so, the American Indians must have had connection with the old mythology of Greece, which contains the 'stones' as well as of India, which has the 'dove';

(iii) The legend in each case may have arisen from the same cause, viz., the inventive faculty of man, as he observed the circumstances with which he was surrounded, and pondered upon them.

1199. So, DELITZSCH says, in Persia, India, and China, there is a second group of Flood-legends, peculiar to the coun-habitants of Raiatea produced, as a 1202. We have just read that the intries of Eastern Asia. A third group is formed by the legends of the Grecian circle; and a fourth by the legends of nations lying beyond the intercourse of the ancient world, as the Welsh, Mexicans, Peruvians:

The legend of the Mexicans and Islanders of Cuba agrees even as to the dove and raven,

with the Biblical account. According to the legend of the Macusi-Indians in South America, the only man who survived the Flood, repeopled the earth by changing stones into men. According to that of the Tamanaks

proof that a Flood of waters must have covered their country in former days,-

the corals and mussels, which are found on

the highest summits of the island.

The

Probably, we have here the real solution of the question before us. Raiateans were right in believing that the existence of the remains of these shellfish upon their hills was a certain indication that the sea had once

covered their land. But they attri- | supposes, resulting from geological buted to some remote era in the changes, connected with the formation history of their own people, what, as of the present Caspian Sea, mixed up we now know from the teachings of Geology, may have happened vast ages--perhaps, even millions of years, —before man lived upon the face of the the earth.