642 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



on the first day of the tenth month) that the " tops of the mount- 

 ains " became visible. Hence it follows that, if the ark drew even 

 as much as twenty feet of water, the level of the inundation fell 

 very slowly — at a rate of only a few inches a day — until the top 

 of the mountain on which it rested became visible. This is an 

 amount of movement which, if it took place in the sea, would be 

 overlooked by ordinary people on the shore. But the Mesopota- 

 mian plain slopes gently, from an elevation of five hundred or six 

 hundred feet at its northern end, to the sea, at its southern end, 

 with hardly so much as a notable ridge to break its uniform flat- 

 ness, for three hundred to four hundred miles. These being the 

 conditions of the case, the following inquiry naturally presents 

 itself : not, be it observed, as a recondite problem, generated by 

 modern speculation, but as a plain suggestion flowing out of that 

 very ordinary and archaic piece of knowledge that water can not 

 be piled up in a heap like sand ; or that it seeks the lowest level. 

 When, after one hundred and fifty days, " the fountains also of 

 the deep and the windows of heaven were stopped, and the rain 

 from heaven was restrained " (Gen. viii, 2), what prevented the 

 mass of water, several, possibly very many, fathoms deep, which 

 covered, say, the present site of Bagdad, from sweeping seaward 

 in a furious torrent ; and, in a very few hours, leaving, not only 

 the " tops of the mountains," but the whole plain, save any minor 

 depressions, bare ? How could its subsidence, by any possibility, 

 be an affair of weeks and months ? 



And if this difficulty is not enough, let any one try to imagine 

 how a mass of water several, perhaps very many, fathoms deep, 

 could be accumulated on a flat surface of land rising well above 

 the sea, and separated from it by no sort of barrier. Most people 

 know Lord's Cricket-ground. Would it not be in absurd contra- 

 diction to our common knowledge of the properties of water to 

 imagine that, if all the mains of all the water- works of London 

 were turned on to it, they could maintain a heap of water twenty 

 feet deep over its level surface ? Is it not obvious that the water, 

 whatever momentary accumulation might take place at first, 

 would not stop there, but that it would dash, like a mighty mill- 

 race, southward down the gentle slope which ends in the Thames ? 

 And is it not further obvious, that whatever depth of water might 

 be maintained over the cricket-ground, so long as all the mains 

 poured on to it, anything which floated there would be speedily 

 whirled away by the current, like a cork in a gutter when the 

 rain pours ? But if this is so, then it is no less certain that Noah's 

 deeply laden, sailless, oarless, and rudderless craft, if by good 

 fortune it escaped capsizing in whirlpools, or having its bottom 

 knocked into holes by snags (like those which prove fatal even 

 to well-built steamers on the Mississippi in our day), would have 



