Ch. XXI ii. I 



OF VOLCANIC REGIONS. 



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a 



59,", 



come 



Traditions of deluges.— The traditions which have 

 down to us from remote ages of great inundations said to 

 have happened in Greece and on the confines of the Grecian 

 settlements, had doubtless their origin in a series of local 

 catastrophes, caused principally by earthquakes. The fre- 

 quent migrations of the earlier inhabitants, and the total 

 want of written annals long after the first settlement of each 

 country, make it impossible for us at this distance of time to 

 fix either the true localities or probable dates of these events. 

 The first philosophical writers of Greece were, therefore as 

 much at a loss as ourselves to offer a reasonable conjecture 



mi 



same 



sometimes have become confounded in one tale, or how much 

 this tale may have been .amplified, in after times, or obscured 

 by mythological fiction. The floods of Ogyges and Deuca- 

 lion are commonly said to have happened before the Trojan 

 war ; that of Ogyges more than seventeen, and that of Deu- 

 calion more than fifteen, centuries before our era. As to the 

 Ogygian flood, it is generally described as having laid waste 

 Attica, and was referred by some writers to a great overflow- 

 ing of rivers, to which cause Aristotle also attributed the 

 deluge of Deucalion, which, he says, affected Hellas only, or 

 the central part of Thessaly. Others ima_ 

 event to have been due to an earthquake, which threw down 

 masses of rock, and stopped up the course of the Peneus in 

 the narrow defile between mounts Ossa and Olympus. 



As to the deluge of Samothrace, which is generally re- 

 ferred to a distinct date, it appears that the shores of that 

 small island and the adjoining mainland of Asia were inun- 

 dated by the sea. Diodorus Siculus says that the inhabi- 

 tants had time to take refuge in the mountains, and save 

 themselves by flight ; he also relates, that long after the event 

 the fishermen of the island drew up in their nets the capitals 

 of columns,' which were the remains of cities submerged 

 % that terrible catastrophe.'* These statements scarcely 

 leave any doubt that there occurred, at the period alluded 

 to > a subsidence of the coast, accompanied by earthquakes 



B ook v. eh. xlvi.— Sec Letter of M. Virlet, Bulletin dc la Soc. Geol. de 



Fran 



ce, torn. ii. p. 341. 

 VOL. I. 



Q Q 



