318 SCRIPTURE NATURAL HISTORY. 



indented by the galloping of a horse. Consequently, the flux and 

 reflux of prodigious tides, seem the only theory on which the stu- 

 dents of nature can account for the stratification of the earth. And, 

 as the moon now governs the variation of the tides, were it lawful 

 to indulge in conjecture, it might be thought that God, who employs 

 means the most natural and easy, was pleased to drown the world 

 by an increase of elipticity in her orbit. 



The Mosaic history of the deluge has been carefully examined by 

 Lightfoot, who equalled the Rabbins in Hebrew literature. The 

 whole period, according to him, comprised a solar year. Forty-six 

 days of this period were spent in conveying stores and provisions 

 for the ark ; arid seven in receiving the beasts and cattle. The 

 rain began to fall on the 18th day of the Hebrew month of March- 

 esvan, and continued forty days. During the fall of the rain, it is 

 thought that the atmosphere was much darkened, because it was 

 afterwards promised that day and night should no more cease, 

 Gen. viii. 22. The waters or lifles continued to increase for one 

 hundred and fifty days. The decrease commenced on the first 

 day of Sivan, an d continued one hundred and twenty days. Thus 

 we trace the counsel of heaven, and not the accidental approach of 

 a comet, in allowing Noah time to reap the harvest before the rain ; 

 and in bringing him out of the ark at a season proper for following 

 the waters with the seeds for the succeeding year. 



The changes and ravages of nature, correspond with the impet- 

 uous force of the flood. Travellers and geologists are all agreed, 

 that in every continent and island, the mountains, the hills, the de- 

 clivities, are, in places without number, left desolatetl of earth, 

 craggy and bare ; and many of the rocks of bolder hills, and salient 

 promontories, appear to have been detached to a considerable dis- 

 tance from the elevated summits to which thry once belonged. 

 Against promontories and bolder shores, the flux and reflux of the 

 tides would be so impetuous, as, in many places, to undermine 

 their base, and the part so undermined would fall prostrate into the 

 sea, leaving the side from which it was disjoined by caverns and 

 fissures, a mural and terrific precipice, to brave through future age* 

 the incessant war of the ocean. M. de Saussure has described the 

 precipice of the calcareous rocks of Mont Brezon, in Switzerland, 

 as the most sublime and terrific he had ever seen ; and he traced 

 the action of water 200 toises higher than the lake of Geneva. 

 Bishop Pontoppedon tells us, in his history of Norway, that the 

 water close to the rocks is generally three or four hundred fathoms 

 deep. In Floge Creek, he adds, no bottom can be found with a 

 line of a thousand fathoms. Nordall Creek is reported to be nine 

 hundred fathoms in depth ; and other Creeks of Norway, which 

 indent themselves ten leagues within the land, continue to have 

 three or four hundred fathoms of water. The bottoms also of those, 

 creeks rese*rnble the land in hills, dales, and rugged rocks. Seve- 

 ral of our English navigators give us similar accounts of creeks in 

 the western coast of North America, and in the vicinity of Nootka 



