GEOLOGIES AND DELUGES. 261 



of the Hesperides, the lion slain by Gizdubar to the lion of Nemea 

 which Hercules slew, and finally, just as Gizdubar is ferried 

 across the waters of the dead, so Hercules is taken by Helios in 

 the golden boat of the sun across the ocean. 



As the Greeks have borrowed so much of the legend it would 

 be surprising if they had not taken the rest,- including the story 

 of the deluge, and accordingly we find the Greeks provided with 

 a legend of the flood, or with more than one, as they appear to 

 have had more than one Heracles ; but that which most closely 

 accords with the Chaldean is the flood of Deukalion. 



On the other hand, the Egyptians, who had sun stories of their 

 own, did not borrow the legend of Gizdubar, and are silent as to 

 a deluge ; a fact of extreme importance when we consider that the 

 Egyptian civilization was contemporaneous with the Chaldean, if 

 not indeed older. The Nile is gentler in its overflowing than the 

 Tigris, so that Egypt did not suffer under the scourge of unex- 

 pected floods. 



If, finally, we turn to China, also possessed of very ancient his- 

 toric records, and liable to the destructive deluges of the Yellow 

 River, which have earned for it the designation " The Curse of 

 China," we discover a deluge story of great importance, to which 

 Suess has already called attention. In the third Schu of the 

 Canon of Yao, a monarch who reigned, it is supposed, somewhere 

 about 2357 b. c, and therefore contemporaneous with Khammu- 

 rabi, we read: The Ti said, "Prince of the Four Mountains, 

 destructive in their overflowings are the waters of the flood. In 

 their wide extension they inclose the mountains and cover the 

 great heights, threatening the heaven with their floods, so that 

 the lower people is unruly and murmur. Where is a capable man 

 whom I can employ this evil to overcome ? " Khwan was en- 

 gaged, but for nine years he labored in vain ; a fresh engineer, 

 named Yu, was therefore called in ; within eight years he com- 

 pleted great works : he thinned the woods, regulated the streams, 

 dammed them, and opened their mouths, provided the people with 

 food, and acted as a great benefactor to the state. 



It is refreshing thus to pass from the ornate deceptions of 

 legend to the sober truth of history ; and if the facts on which the 

 Gizdubar legend of the deluge is founded could be expressed in 

 the same simple language, we should probably find it narrating 

 similar events, or events as little calculated to surprise us as those 

 of the straightforward Chinese Schti. 



History then fails to furnish evidence of any phenomenon 

 which can be called catastrophic in the geologic sense of the word, 

 and geology has no need to return to the catastrophism of its 

 youth ; in becoming evolutional it does not cease to remain essen- 

 tially uniformitarian. 



