154 GEOLOGY AND HISTORY 



find the first unequivocal evidence of man as existing 

 on various parts of the continents. At the close of 

 this period occurred changes, whether sudden or 

 gradual we do not know, though they could not have 

 occupied a very long time, which led to the extinc- 

 tion of the earliest races of men and many con- 

 temporaneous animals. That these changes were in 

 part, at least, of the nature of submergence we learn 

 from the fact that our present continents are more 

 sunken or less elevated out of the water, and also 

 from the deposit of superficial gravels and other 

 detritus more recent than the pleistocene over their 

 surfaces. We are thus shut up by geological facts to 

 the belief in a Deluge geologically modern and prac- 

 tically universal. 



One other objection to the Deluge narrative 

 perhaps deserves a word of comment that urged 

 against the statement of the gradual disappearance 

 of the waters. The extraordinary difficulty is raised 

 respecting this, that the water must have rushed sea- 

 ward in a furious torrent. The objection is based 

 apparently on the idea that the foundation for the 

 original narrative was a river inundation in the 

 Mesopotamian plain. This cannot be admitted ; but 

 if it were, the objection would not apply. River 

 inundations, whether of the Nile or Euphrates, sub- 

 side inch by inch, not after the manner of mountain 

 torrents. Thus this objection is another instance of 

 difficulties gratuitously imported into the history. 



In point of fact the narrator represents the 



