312 GENERAL OBSERVATIONS. 



asserts, that " Noah on quitting the avk, or very soon after, planted a 

 vineyard." — ^The charge which that writer prefers against Professor 

 Buckland, of "not having carefully considered the words used by 

 Moses in describing the Noachian deluge," may with great justice be 

 retorted upon himself. From the notice taken of Canaan the son of 

 Ham, in what is said about the vineyard, we may infer, that it was not 

 planted till several years after the deluge. Indeed, had the deluge been 

 nothing more than what that writer conceives, the wonder is, why 

 Noah would think of planting a vineyard at all; as he had his choice 

 of thousands of vineyards, left by the antediluvians, and rendered 

 more fertile by a slight coating of mud ! 



Had Moses given no intimation of violent means employed for 

 the submersion of the earth, the simple fact which he states, that the 

 waters overflowed the whole globe for an hundred and fifty days, and 

 the lower parts of the land much longer, implies great and extensive 

 changes. Were our present strata submerged so long in the ocean, 

 exposed to the action of the waves and currents, besides the agitation 

 occasioned by the rising and falling of the waters, could we suppose 

 that the surface would scarcely be disturbed? On the contrary, might 

 we not expect, that the alluvial beds, with vast quantities of the softer 

 strata, would be wholly dissolved, or terribly broken; and that even 

 the solid rocks, or masses of strata, dashing against one another, 

 would to a great extent be ground to powder? Such effects must have 

 been produced by the deluge, even if waters had been created on pur- 

 pose to drown the world, to be afterwards annihilated when they had 

 fulfilled their commission. But how much greater must the cata- 

 strophes have been, when the waters of the ocean were employed to 

 cover the dry land? We are expressly informed by the sacred histo- 

 rian, that while "the windows of heaven were opened," to pour down 

 rain, " all the fountains of the great deep were broken up ;" words 

 evidently intimating, that the waters rushed up from the depths of the 



