A SPRING RELISH 181 



larger river than now. Professor Zittel reaches the 

 same conclusion concerning the Nile, and Humboldt 

 was impressed with the same fact while examining 

 the Orinoco and the tributaries of the Amazon. All 

 these rivers appear to be hut mere fractions of their 

 former selves. The same is true of all the great 

 lakes. If not Noah's flood, then evidently some 

 other very wet spell, of which this is a tradition, 

 lies far behind us. Something like the drought of 

 summer is beginning upon the earth; the great 

 floods have dried up; the rivers are slowly shrink- 

 ing; the water is penetrating farther and farther 

 into the cooling crust of the earth; and what was 

 ample to drench and cover its surface, even to make 

 a Noah's flood, will be but a drop in the bucket to 

 the vast interior of the cooled sphere. 



