HISTOEICAL TRADITIONS AND MYTHS OF OBSERVATION. 321 



In the Chinese Encyclopedia from whicli I have already- 

 quoted two remarkable passages, an account is to be found 

 bearing on the present subject. " Eastern Tartary. — In tra- 

 velling from the shore of the Eastern Sea toward Che-lu, 

 neither brooks nor ponds are met with in the country, although 

 it is intersected by mountains and valleys. Nevertheless there 

 are found in the sand, very far away from the sea, oyster- shells 

 and the shields of crabs. The tradition of the Mongols who 

 inhabit the country is that it has been said from time immemo- 

 rial that in remote antiquity the waters of the deluge flooded 

 the district, and when they retired, the places where they had 

 been made their appearance covered with sand. . . . However 

 it may have happened, to follow the great geographer Ti-chi, a 

 part of this country is in great plains, where several hundred 

 leagues are found to have been covered by the waters and since 

 abandoned ; this is why these deserts are called the Sandy Sea, 

 which indicates that they were not originally covered with sand 

 and gravel."^ 



Again, the presence of fossil shells on high mountains has 

 long been adduced as evidence of the Noachic flood. Thus 

 Tertullian connects the sea-sheUs on mountains with the reap- 

 pearance of the earth from below the waters,^ and the argu- 

 ment may be followed up through later times, and was current 

 in England till quite recently. In the ninth edition of Home's 

 ' Introduction to the Scriptures,' published in 1846, the evi- 

 dence of fossils is confidently held to prove the universality of 

 the Deluge ; but the argument disappears from the next edi- 

 tion, published ten years later. 



To the statements of classical writers as to anchors and 

 pieces of wreck being found inland, some more modern ac- 

 counts must be added. From time to time, whether from up- 

 heaval of the earth's surface or other geological changes, ships 

 and things belonging to them have been found far inland, in 

 places for ages out of reach of navigable waters. Buffbn speaks 

 of fragments of vessels being found in a mountain lake in Por- 

 tugal, far from the sea, and mentions a statement of Sabinus, 



* Mem. cone, les Chinois, vol. iv. p. 474. Klemm, 0. G-., vol. vi. p. 467. 

 « Tert., ' De Pallio,' ii. H. P. Link, ' Die Urwelt,' etc. ; BerUn, 1821, p. 4. 



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