544 Remarks on the 



Now if this be true, and the deluge was the last catastrophe, those 

 mountains must have existed within the historical era of man, since a 

 period of no more than 3333 years are assigned for the production of 

 the conglomerate, which contains fragments of the diluvial strata. 



It will therefore necessarily follow, as no convulsion equal to the re- 

 moval of primary mountains has occurred since the deluge, or within the 

 historical period, that those imaginary mountains ought to be in existence 

 still !* Yet we do not find such to be the fact. 



Nor moreover does it appear very clear, where these mountains could 

 have been situated, or how rivers equal to the transport of primary 

 fragments, to a distance of thirty miles, could have flowed from them, 

 since we are told that at this time, the seaward face was one hundred and 

 twenty-five miles north of Calcutta, or about half-way betiueen Moorshedabad 

 and Malda, while the mountains are said to have been only thirty miles 

 from it.f They must therefore have formed rocky islands in the midst of 

 the ocean, and consequently could not have furnished rivers equal to the 

 transport of the debris, whose deposition presupposes an inclination, 

 such as that of the present deposits at the head of the Delta. J 



The idea, that the primary fragments of which the conglomerate is 

 composed, were brought from mountains, at no greater distance from Calcutta 

 than thirty miles, is based altogether on the data furnished by the Brama- 

 putra and Assam rivers. But it appears to be altogether an inadmis- 

 sible assumption to state, that because those rivers have not now the 

 power of transporting pebbles beyond twenty-five or thirty miles, that 

 . therefore they never did possess it, or that the river or rivers which 

 were instrumental to the formation of the conglomerate could have had 

 no greater power of transport than these have now ; for if the fall, and 



* As we hear frequently, on the best authority, of islands rising up from the depths of the 

 ocean in situations where soundings were unknown before, of mountains disappearing, of 

 entire provinces sinking below, and again rising above the sea, we should indeed be blind to 

 the operations of nature, and the various causes of changes in the surface of the earth, 

 were we to ascribe all their effects to the Mosaic deluge. We may here refer to the earth- 

 quake at Chittagong, 1762, and to that of Cutch 1S19. During the earthquake 1726, we 

 have it on evidence standing recorded in the Fhilosophieal Transactions, that entire 

 mountains, (whether primitive or not, is nothing to the purpose,) were removed, and not only 

 levelled to the surface, but that they sank considerably below it, and that the sea rushed in and 

 occupied the place on which they stood. At Cutch, we have it equally on indisputable testimony 

 that a large tract of the Run of Cutch sank down beneath the sea, another tract at the same time 

 suddenly rising up ; for the particulars of which, we refer to the Geological Transactions.— Ed. 

 t The sea may have been hemmed in between mountains, sc as to form a narrow bay. — Ed. 

 t Calcutta Journal of Natural History, p. 453. No. 3. 



