322 HISTORICAL TRADITIONS AND MYTHS OF OBSERVATION. 



in his commentaiy on the lines just quoted from Ovidj that in 

 the year 1460 a vessel was found vpith its anchors, in a mine in 

 the Alps.^ This is, no doubt, the same story that Antonio 

 Galvano refers to, when he says, " Thus they tell of finding 

 hulls of ships and iron anchors in the mountains of Switzerland 

 very far inland, where it appears that there was never sea nor 

 salt wsiter."^ 



The possible bearing of such phenomena on the formation of 

 diluvial traditions is clearly shown by their having been repeat- 

 edly claimed, like the fossil shells, as evidence of the former 

 presence of the sea, and even of the Biblical deluge. It is 

 not, however, necessary, from this point of view, that the ac- 

 counts in question should all be true ; it is enough that they 

 should be believed and reasoned upon. In the seventeenth 

 century. Fray Pedro Simon relates that some miners, running 

 an adit into a hill near Callao, " met with a ship which had on 

 top of it the great mass of the hill, and did not agree in its 

 make and appearance with our ships," whence people judged 

 that it had been left there by the Flood, and the fact is cited in 

 proof of the habitation of the country in antediluvian times.^ 

 Writing in 1730, Strahlenberg gives it as his opinion that the 

 mammoth bones in Siberia are relics of the Deluge, and goes 

 on to add a like example, that some thirty years earlier the 

 whole lower hull of a ship with a keel was found in Barabinsk 

 Tartary, where nevertheless there is no ocean.* Lastly, in 

 Scotland it is quite a common thing for ancient canoes hol- 

 lowed from a single tree to be found buried in places remote 

 from navigable channels, while the skeletons of whales are 

 found in similar situations. Sir John Clerk thus remarks upon 

 a canoe found near Edinburgh in 1726. " The washings of the 

 river Carron discovered a boat, 13 or 14 feet underground; it 

 is 36 feet in length, and 4^ in breadth, all of one piece of oak. 

 There were several strata above it, such as loam, clay, shells, 



1 Buffon, ' Theorie de la Terre,' vol. iii. p. 119. 



2 Galvano, p. 26. 



' Simon, ' Noticias Historiales,' etc. ; Cuenca, 1627, p. 31. 

 ■* Strahlenberg, ' Das Nord- und Ostliche Tlieil von Europaund Asien ;' Stock- 

 holm, 1730, p. 396. C. Hamilton Smith, p. 45. 



