18 SKETCHES OF CUE ATI ON, 



CHAPTER II. 



THE ORDEAL BY WATER. 



WE were too hasty in pronouncing it impossible that 

 the little shell struck from the gorge-wall of the 

 roaring stream could ever have belonged to a living ani 

 mal. It is quite true that no being now exists in the 

 waters of the land or the ocean which can be exactly iden 

 tified with it. There are forms in the sea, however, which 

 possess every characteristic by which we distinguished it 

 from the river mussel. The resemblances are so close that 

 we are compelled to admit that this may really be a marine 

 form. We look again at the pile of rocks from which this 

 specimen was taken. Layer after layer succeeds from the 

 bottom to the top ; and here and there are other similar 

 forms imbedded between the sheets of shale. If these are 

 marine forms, these strata are marine sediments. But here 

 is the difficulty. This place is hundreds of feet above the 

 surface of the sea, and if ever the sea stood at this level 

 the greater part of the continent must have been sub 

 merged. But have we not a record of such a submer 

 gence ? Yes, indeed ; the sacred writers tell us of a deluge 

 which destroyed the human family. A tradition of the 

 same has been embalmed in Ovid s myth of Deucalion and 

 Pyrrha ; and nearly every nation under the sun, from the 

 cultured Greek to the savage Koloschian of Alaska, has its 

 legend under which the memory of the Deluge has been 

 perpetuated. Shall we then content ourselves with the 

 conclusion that this pile of strata was laid down by the 

 waters of the Noachian flood, and that these molluscs were 



