1841.] Capt. Button's Geological Report. 229 



their first upheavement, which period the facts adduced enable us to as- 

 sign to the first subsidence of the waters of the Moasic deluge. — ( See plate) 

 Fig. 9.) 



We may suppose, therefore, that when the ocean had been permitted to 

 transgress its bounds, and had again enveloped the earth as in the time be- 

 fore the third creative day, or separation of land and water ; and had by its 

 devastating effects fulfilled to the utmost the dreadful doom assigned to all 

 organised creation, the vast and imposing ranges of the Himalya and 

 other mountains were caused to burst upwards by volcanic agents from 

 below, as a means of throwing back the waters from the earth into those 

 bounds appointed to receive them, and also to furnish, by their subsequent 

 accumulations of everlasting snows, a never-failing reservoir from which 

 the rivers of the plains were to be supplied with waters to fertilize the 

 soil ; which plains, had the mountains been of inferior elevation, would for 

 ever have remained barren and desolate, except during the prevalence of 

 the periodical monsoon ; for it is apparent, that in the hot climates of the 

 eastern world, no snows could have rested upon mountains of a lesser alti- 

 tude sufficiently long to afford a never-failing supply of waters for irriga- 

 tion. 



Thus, even in the ordering of a mountain range, and the furnishing of 

 wintery snows, is the wisdom and unvarying goodness of the Great First 

 Cause, made manifest to the minds of his inquiring creatures. 



To enter at length into the means by which these revolutions took place, 

 and the reasons why they were allowed, belongs more properly to a sys- 

 tem or theory of geology than to a paper professing to be merely an out- 

 line of the geological formations of a limited district. 



I shall, therefore, for the present, leave the question in this imperfect 

 form with less regret, since I purpose ere long, (should circumstances be- 

 friend me,) to lay before the Society and the Public a theory, which I 

 would fain believe worthy of their most serious and attentive consideration. 



Candahar, 

 IVth July, 1840. 



