DEMARCATION 



1752 



DE MILLE 



and in the seventh month the Ark rested on 

 Mount Ararat. "Noah's dove," sent forth to 

 test whether the earth were once more fit for 

 habitation, returned after the first trial to 

 find shelter and food in the Ark; the second 

 time it came back bearing an olive leaf; the 

 third time it did not return a sign that the 

 land was dry and beginning to yield as of old. 

 Then, after having been a year and ten days 

 in the Ark, Noah and his family again set 

 foot upon the new earth, offered thanksgiving 

 to God, and received the promise expressed in 

 the rainbow, that "the water shall no more 

 become a flood to destroy all flesh." 



The literal interpretation of the Biblical 

 statement that the Flood covered the entire 

 earth has been modified to harmonize with 

 modern geological discoveries concerning the 

 age of rock strata. Bible commentators now 

 generally agree that either the narrative in 

 Genesis described a flood of only local extent, 

 or that the phrase "all the earth" was only rela- 

 tive, since only a small portion of the earth's 

 surface was then known and inhabited. 



Nearly every nation has in its folklore a 

 flood tradition similar in many respects to that 

 of the Hebrews. The Greeks had the story 

 of Deucalion's flood, told by the poet Ovid 

 and familiar to students of Greek mythology. 

 Babylon, India, China, Persia, Syria, Poly- 

 nesia, and even ancient Mexico, Peru and Cuba 

 had their deluge legends. The Babylonian 

 story exerted a strong influence on the Hebrew 

 tradition, and because of its earlier dating it 

 is thought by many to have been the model 

 for the Bible narrative. The clay tablets on 

 which the Babylonian, or Chaldean, account is 

 engraved are known as the Deluge Tablets. 

 Fragments have been unearthed and deciphered 

 at various times, the first translation having 

 been published in 1872 by George Smith, a 

 famous English scholar in Assyriology, and 

 others more recently, in 1910 and 1913. 



Celebrated paintings of the Flood are those 

 of Poussin, in Paris, and of Raphael, in the 

 Vatican at Rome. L.M.B. 



DEMARCATION, de mar ka' shun, LINE OF, 

 the historical name of the boundary line estab- 

 lished by Pope Alexander VI to settle the con- 

 flicting claims of Spain and Portugal to lands 

 in the New World. By a Papal bull issued in 

 May, 1493, he assigned to Spain all the lands 

 its navigators had discovered, or might dis- 

 cover, west of a line running from north to 

 south 100 leagues west of the Azores and Cape 

 Verde Islands, provided such lands had not 



previously been in actual possession of any 

 Christian prince or king; Portugal was to 

 possess all the land discovered under the same 

 conditions east of that line. After this con- 

 cession Spain's possessions were known as the 

 West Indies and those of Portugal as the East 

 Indies. This arrangement proved unsatisfac- 



N.A 



LINE OF DEMARCATION 

 The Pope's division of the Western world, as 

 decided in 1494. 



tory to Portugal, and the two countries in 1494 

 sent commissioners to Tordesillas, a Spanish 

 city, and they succeeded in establishing the 

 line 370 leagues west of the Cape Verde Islands. 



Portugal, on the strength of the extension 

 of this line, eventually claimed and secured 

 Brazil, but disputes as to the exact determina- 

 tion of the line were frequent. A treaty was 

 negotiated on April 22, 1529, at Saragossa, fix- 

 ing the demarcation line 297% leagues east of 

 the Molucca Islands, but this arrangement was 

 abrogated by subsequent treaties. France, 

 England and the Netherlands, the principal 

 colonizers of North America, paid little atten- 

 tion to the Papal bull. 



DE MILLE, JAMES (1833-1880), a Canadian 

 educator and novelist, the writer of more than 

 thirty books of fiction. Among the best of 

 these are Helena's Household, a story of Rome 

 in the first century of the Christian Era, and 

 A Strange Manuscript Found in a Copper 

 Cylinder, published after his death. Andy 

 O'Hara; The Soldier and the Spy; Comedy oj 

 Terrors, and The Dodge Club are others of his 

 books. De Mille was born at Saint John, 

 N. B., was graduated from Brown University 

 in 1854, was professor of the classics in Acadia 



