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Ch. XL VII.] HIS WOEKS Ix\ SUBAQUEOUS STRATA. 



543 



a river is advancm 

 lable series of ages. 



may 



om 



mass 



reef, where wrecks are often not unfrequent, there are no 

 somidings at the depth of many hundred fathoms. Canoes, 

 merchant vessels, and ships of war may have sunk and have 

 been enveloped, in such situations, in calcareous sand and 

 breccia, detached by the breakers from the summit of a 

 submarine mountain. Should a volcanic eruption happen 

 to cover such remains with ashes and sand, and a current of 

 lava be afterwards poured over them, the ships and human 

 skeletons might remain uninjured between the superincum- 



the houses and works of art in the sub- 

 terranean cities of Campania. Already many human remains 

 may have been thus preserved beneath formations more than 

 1,000 feet in thickness ; for, in some volcanic archipelagos, 

 a period of thirty or forty centuries might well be supposed 

 sufficient for such an accumulation. It was stated, that at 

 the distance of about 40 miles from the base of the delta of 

 the Ganges, there is an elliptical space about 15 miles in 

 diameter where soundings of from 100 to 300 fathoms 

 sometimes fail to reach the bottom. (See above, Vol. I. 

 p. 475.) As during the flood season the quantity of mud 

 and sand poured by the great rivers into the Bay of Bengal 

 is so great that the sea only recovers its transparency at the 

 distance of 60 miles from the coast, this depression must be 

 gradually shoaling, especially as during the monsoons, the 



in that 



sea, loaded with mud and sand, is beaten back 

 direction towards the delta. If therefore a ship or human 



iin 



become buried under sediment 



Even on that part of the floor of the ocean to which no 



matter 



constitutes, at any given period, by far the larger proportion 

 of the whole submarine area), there are circumstances 

 accompanying a wreck which favour the conservation of 

 skeletons. For when the vessel fills suddenly with water, 

 especially in the night, many persons are drowned between 

 decks and in their cabins, so that their bodies are prevented 



