432 ON THE UNIVERSAL DELUGE. 



present bed of the sea, and the former bed of the sea has 

 become the present dry land, then, according to the present 

 state of geography, though only conjectural, we should be 

 able to point out such portions of the earth as were over- 

 whelmed by the catastrophe ; and yet we have never 

 heard that any one has hazarded such an experiment. 

 In the constitution of the present habitable globe, we 

 find no proofs remaining of such a revolution. 



Among these revolutions of nature, we never reckon 

 common inundations, such as take place at present from 

 water overflowing its boundaries, though these also may 

 produce devastation whose effects remain visible for an 

 hundred years. But, in mountainous districts, another 

 kind of aqueous eruption makes its appearance, and may 

 be classed along with the traditions of a deluge. We 

 very frequently, for instance, observe the valleys of high 

 mountains forming a range of basins separated from one 

 another by shorter or longer defiles, and opening through 

 the last defile into a wider valley, or a marsh. The 

 shape of these basins, or cauldrons, commonly lying above 

 one another like so many stories, and the level surface of 

 their water, leave no doubt of their being once enclosed 

 lakes which were formerly blocked up by the barriers of 

 the defiles, and which flowed towards the level country, 

 as soon as the defiles were broken down by the waters, 

 If no kind of historical monuments in the west of Europe 

 bears evidence of those events, which, at least on a small 

 scale, occur in our own times, this intimates that it was 

 inhabited, not by an original population, but by a fo- 

 reign or modern race of people ; whereas those revolutions 

 extended to remote antiquity. The numerous masses of 

 rock found on both sides of the Alps to the height of 



