QUESTIONS RESPECTING THE DELUGE 155 



Deluge as prevailing for a whole year, which would 

 be impossible in the case of a river inundation. He 

 attributes it in part, at least, to the * great deep '- 

 that is, the ocean ; and he represents the ark as 

 drifting inland or toward the north. Such conditions 

 can be satisfied only by the supposition of a sub- 

 sidence of the land similar in kind, at least, to the 

 great post-glacial flood of geology. Partial subsidences 

 of this kind, local but very extreme, have occurred 

 even in later times, as, for instance, in the Runn of 

 Cutch, the delta of the Mississippi, and the delta of 

 the Nile ; and if the objectors are determined to 

 make the Deluge of Noah very local and more recent 

 than the post-glacial flood, it would be more rational 

 to refer to subsidences like those just mentioned, and 

 of which they will find examples in Lyell's Prin- 

 ciples and other geological books. It is, however, 

 decidedly more probable that Noah's flood is identical 

 with that which destroyed the men of the mammoth 

 age, the palaeocosmic or ' palaeolithic ' men ; * and in 

 that case the recession of the waters would probably 

 be gradual, but intermittent, * going and returning/ 

 as our ancient narrator has it ; but there need not 

 have been any violent debacle. 



It is also to be noted that a submergence of the 

 land and consequent deluge may be cataclysmic or 

 tranquil, according to local circumstances, and that it 

 may have been locally sudden, while for the whole 

 world it was gradual and of longer duration. Such 



1 Modern Science in Bible Lands> chaps, iii. and iv. 



