in Reply to Mr. Beke. 201 



changed neither the character nor the products of this country. 

 Did not its waters come hither and return as in other places 

 it might reach ? Might not these rivers have run, and their 

 joint delta been formed, thousands of years before the ca- 

 taclysm ? Geology knows of none other than relative dates. 

 Thus, were even the delta established, we should yet be no 

 nearer to the proof that the gulf was in its site in the days of 

 Peleg. 



Mr. Beke, with much candour, relinquishes the reading of 

 Gen., x. 1 1, that Asshur was the person who built Nineveh, 

 and adopts the opinion that Asshur (or Assyria) was the 

 country and Nimrod the builder; though it appears from the 

 sequel that he still adheres to a second Babel in the Babylon 

 of the Chaldeans. But as Shinar must have embraced no 

 very extensive range, — for its little chief and three others Abra- 

 ham and his servants vanquished, — and Nimrod's Babel (or 

 Babylon) and the Babylon of the prophets were in it, that we 

 have here two places of the same name, — both moreover, as we 

 have seen, built in the very infancy of society, and both by 

 " the Assyrian", is, I apprehend, an inference not sanctioned 

 by true historical construction. 



The opinion, however, is repeated, of the improbability, at 

 all events, of cities having been built (or, more properly, of 

 settlements having been made), at the earliest post-diluvian age, 

 in the low lands of the Euphrates. No allusion is made to 

 my answer that the cities and settlements of a hot climate, and 

 more particularly those of an early people, are of necessity, 

 and that the earliest on record were, in fact, fixed in such, 

 places. The travellers from or towards the east settled in 

 " a plain", and any plain in which they could then have settled 

 becomes immediately liable to all the objections made to that 

 spot, in which the history, according to every authority, I be- 

 lieve, (save Drusius,) says that they did settle. Col. Chesney's 

 evidence*, relieves us from further discussion. He tells us that 

 along the Euphrates " it is no uncommon occurrence to see 

 a whole village afloat, and the people following it on foot or 

 in their canoes to arrest the materials of their dwellings." In 

 a cold climate we have little notion of the value of water to the 

 inhabitants of a hot one. Here, however, we have the Nimrods of 

 the present day, in spite of the experience of nearly 4000 years, 

 doing just what their own and the other earliest patriarchs 

 did before them, who, heedless of all the good reasons to the 

 contrary, seem to have chosen for their little settlements every 

 such impracticable spot they could find. They built Nineveh 



* Report of Committee of House of Commons, &c. 

 Third Series. Vol. 7. No. 39. Sept. 1835. 2 D 



