106 WRITINGS OF JAMES SMITHSON. 



Deposition of the Calcareous Mud. 



The waters of the deluge had not, surely, either a dura- 

 tion or power, to obtain the matter of this supposed layer 

 of mud. 



No shores any longer existing, shells could not he pulver- 

 ized by the beat of the wave, for it is not deep under water 

 that such destruction is effected ; nor, was it so, would the 

 short period of a year have been sufficient to produce the 

 material of all the secondary limestones of the earth ? 



To have harrowed up this matter from the depths of the 

 ocean, would have required an agitation of the waters, 

 which nothing warrants us in giving to them, which every 

 thing denies their having had. 



No hurricanes, no tempestuous winds, no swollen billows, 

 are recorded. To drown mankind they were superfluous. 

 A wind having arisen at the termination of the calamity 

 tells that none existed before ; and this wind must have 

 been a most gentle one, a very zephyr. A vessel, bulky 

 beyond all the efforts of imagination to figure, so laden, so 

 manned, could not have lived in any agitated sea, least in 

 one which out-topped the Alps, and the Andes, all that could 

 curb its fury, and mitigate its violence. 



Had the ark not foundered, which is impossible, what yet 

 had become of the millions which its sides enclosed ? Few 

 had survived to repair the effects of the divine wrath. 



The waters must have been at rest when the ark continued 

 stationary for many months on the mountains of Ararat. 



Nor, do the agitations of a sea extend far below its sur- 

 face. What navigator has told of the storm in which the 

 sea became thick with its own sediments ? 



But had such a deposit been made on our island, it would 

 not have continued on it. Standing like a little turret in 

 the bosom of the waters, each agitation of them would have 

 precipitated part of it down its sides. Their gigantic tides 

 must alone have washed it away, and on the rush of their 



