lo TRAVELS IN 
and owing to local circumstances. Had it been general, and 
in the same degree as has been observed on the shores of 
Bothnia, the isthmus of Suez must have been overflown, and 
consequently Africa must have been an island, later than 2000 
years ago ; whereas there is every reason to suppose that, many 
ages before that period, the isthmus was pretty much in the 
same state in which it now is. The progressive retreat of the 
ocean carmot therefore be general. It is evident, at the same 
time, to use the language of the sacred historian, " That all 
" the high hills, that were under the whole heaven, were 
" covered \ mountains that are now several thousand feet 
above its level, and as many thousand miles removed from 
its shores, bear the most unequivocal indications of this truth. 
But this effect may, perhaps with more plausibility, be 
ascribed to the operation of some sudden cause, some con- 
vulsion in the globe of the earth, or some check in its diurnal 
or annual motion, which produced an universal change upon 
its surface ; and by which " the waters under the heaven 
" were gathered together unto one place, and the dry land 
" appeared." Whether this change happened at the first 
creation, or the earth was deluged at some subsequent pe- 
riod, an idea that the history of all the civilized nations on 
earth seem to glance at, we must be content to remain in 
ignorance,; for man, with all his boasted philosophy, will 
never be able to solve the questions which the Hebrew poet 
has put into the mouth of the Almighty. '* Who shut up 
" the sea with doors, when it brake forth, as if it had issued 
" out of the womb ? When I made the cloud the garment 
*' thereof and thick darkness a swaddling band for it, and 
*' brakt up for it my decreed place, and set bars and doors, and 
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