314 GEOLOGIES AND DELUGES 



us with a trustworthy account of the Mesopotamian 

 deluge. 



Reasoning from the facts as it records them, Suess lays 

 great stress on the course taken by the ship from Surippak, 

 supposed to have been situated near the mouth of the 

 Euphrates, to the land of Nizir, a distance of about 240 

 miles up stream. Had the flood been produced solely by 

 heavy rainfall, and a consequent overflowing of the swollen 

 rivers, the ship, instead of being carried inland, would 

 have been drifted out to sea, i.e., southwards into the 

 Persian gulf. Suess therefore suggests that a great wave 

 was produced in the Persian gulf, partly by a cyclone 

 and partly by an earthquake. This wave of twofold 

 origin then rolled in upon the low-lying land of Meso- 

 potamia, and drove its floods of water up the valley till 

 they washed the foot of the Nizir hills. 



Of all catastrophes none are more terrible, none more 

 disastrous than those thus produced. When the shock of 

 an earthquake occurs beneath the sea, and affects the 

 adjacent land, a trembling of the ground is first felt, then 

 the sea retires and leaves the beach bare, only to return 

 in a long mighty wave which breaks with violence on the 

 shore. Thus on October 28, 1746, Callao, in Peru, after 

 being shaken by an earthquake, was overwhelmed by a 

 sea-wave and utterly destroyed ; of its 5,000 inhabitants 

 only 200 survived the flood. Still more destructive was 

 the famous earthquake of Lisbon, November 1, 1755, 

 when the inhabitants, without a warning, were destroyed 

 in the falling city, and in six minutes 60,000 persons 

 perished. The sea in this case, as in others, retired first, 

 and then rose 50 feet or more above its usual level, 

 swamping the boats in the harbour ; at Cadiz the wave is 

 said to have reached a height of 60 feet, and it was felt 

 over the greater part of the North Ailantic Ocean, arriv- 

 ing even on our own shores, as at Kinsale, in Ireland, 



