0 Notices respecting New Books. 
and not locally, by using it in the plural, This word may have 
been afterwards transferred as a name, applicable to Armenia, 
without the slightest reference to the ark: for in the space of 
from 700 to 900 years, which elapsed from the time of Moses to 
the ages of Isaiah and Jeremiah, great changes in countries must 
have taken place; and in those éarly establishments, nothing 
was long durable. As to names, they were the most fickle parts 
belonging to countries; for a name was easily carried from place 
to place, though a territory could not; so that, analogy of name, 
though found in Scripture, is no demonstration of identity; and 
Isaiah and Jeremiah allude to very foreign matters, in their men- 
tion of Ararat, to what Moses did. Indeed we might as well look 
for Damascus in the Desert of Arabia, as for the ark in Armenia; 
for the land of Uz is in the Arabian Desert, and Damascus is in 
the land of Uz: but we know that Damascus is not in Arabia;. 
and therefore, we reason, that these must be two distant coun- 
tries named alike. 
“ Now had the two great prophets spoken counter to Moses, 
it would have been much more melancholy and awful; and which’ 
they would certainly have done, if they had said that the ark 
grounded in Armenia: but, they neither wrote to conduct us to. 
the ark, nor to lure us into any contrary pursuit; and we must 
here endeavour to persuade ourselves, that Ararat on the north, 
is not Ararat on the east, of Shinar; and that there is no con- 
tradiction between Moses and the two prophets ; because, one 
event preceded the other nearly 1700 years; and because, the 
incidents were as foreign from one another, as they were distant 
in time. 
** In our endeavour, then, to arrive at the truth, we cannot 
do better than retrace the geographical rhumb, which Moses has 
laid down for us, from Ararat to Shinar. In our progress along 
this track, from the position of the latter place, we come to that 
long and elevated range of mountains which some of the ancient 
writers have considered to be a continuation of Taurus and 
Caucasus ; and which extend, according to Quintus Curtius, in 
an eastern direction all through Asia, even to the coast of China. 
From this grand ridge, several collateral branches stretch, from 
different points, towards the north and towards the south, and 
at the western extremity of which are the Gordizan mountains of 
Armenia, part of which is supposed, by some of the authors we 
have mentioned, to be the Ararat where Noah alighted after the 
flood: so that, the resting-place of the ark may yet have been on 
these same mountains, though not in Armenia. 
‘* Procopius says, that the Macedonians called the part of these 
mountains, on the eastern frontier of Persia, which had been 
previously called Paropamisus, by the name of Caucasus, in com- 
pliment 
