ON THE UNIVERSAL DELUGE. 435 



Sea was once shut up on all sides. It afterwards burst 

 through its mighty mound offa/anischen rocks to the Hel- 

 lespont, and inundated a great part of the coast of Asia, as 

 well as Samothracia itself. An objection started to the 

 possibility of such an event is, that, from the observations 

 of Olivier and General Andreossy, the shores of the 

 Black Sea are, in most places, lower than those of the 

 Bosphorus ; and that its waters, therefore, even if they 

 were Considerably higher than they are at present, would 

 more readily overflow the former than the latter. But 

 since every rock exposed for such a length of time is 

 daily crumbling down, it is a question, whether the 

 shore of the Black Sea has undergone any alteration 

 since that period ; and we know that the eruptions 

 took their direction, not so much from the low situation 

 of the barrier, as from the nature of the rock of which 

 it was constructed, being influenced by the weather, and 

 from the rock itself being rent asunder. Be that as it 

 may, the words with which Diodorus commences his nar- 

 rative are remarkable, when he says, the Samothracian 

 deluge happened earlier than those of other nations. It 

 at least so far preceded others, that, in the estimation of 

 the Greek historian, independent of the deluges of Ogy- 

 ges and Deucalion, similar natural occurrences more or 

 less authenticated were received as historical facts. 



Finally, the effects produced by the bursting of lakes 

 or debacles do not appear to be out of proportion to the 

 devastation mentioned by the traditions of nations. To 

 abide by our former example, floods which could carry 

 along with them masses of rock of 50,000 cubic feet, 

 were in a situation to bury a whole people ; and the few 

 individuals who might be preserved would undoubtedly 



