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3,000 years. The drifting of the sands of the Nubian desert 
produces remarkable changes in a comparatively short time. 
The encroachment of the Nubian sandy desert is irresistible, 
and the population is gradually emigrating to Lower Egypt. 
Where the land has been abandoned, the advance of the sand 
on the cultivated districts is becoming more apparent. About 
sixty-five miles north of Wadi Halfeh the desert has covered a 
great alluvial plain, which had formerly been under cultivation, 
and is approaching the river, so that the trunks of the palm- 
trees are completely surrounded with sand for upwards of 
fifteen feet from their roots. Although rain seldom falls in 
Nubia, yet, when such is the case, the fall is remarkable for its 
violence, as testified 'by the magnitude of the water-courses 
and the heaps of boulders, gravel, and sands. I could mention 
numbers of other changes which have been brought about 
during a few centuries, of the same character as those which 
geologists have ascribed to many thousands of years. Even 
the cities of Pompeii and Herculaneum, which have been dis- 
covered entombed in the vicinity of Vesuvius, were all but lost 
to history. Had it not been for Dion Cassius incidentally 
noticing their destruction, about a century and a half after the 
catastrophe (which occurred about 1,785 years ago), their ages 
would, doubtless, have been computed as of many thousands of 
years. If, then, these changes have been so much overlooked 
in the centre of the civilized world, we cannot expect to obtain 
complete accounts in other and less favoured regions. 
_ Had it not been for the records of Holy Writ and of profane 
history, the relics found in the mounds of Nineveh would, 
doubtless, have been assigned to countless ages past, like the 
mounds in the basin of the Mississippi, which have been com- 
puted as 50,000 years old. Two thousand five hundred years 
ago Nineveh flourished in all its grandeur. Never did any 
city equal it in greatness and magnificence, yet it is now buried 
in oblivion, and its site overwhelmed with sand. Where is 
Babylon, the glory of kingdoms ? The very ground on which 
it stood is a scene of desolation- — drifted sands and pools of 
waoer. Yet this great capital of the Chaldeans was in all its 
splendour as late as about 2,200 years ago. 
lhe scenes of our terrestrial habitation are not permanent, 
but ever changing. I have appealed to demonstrable facts; 
but the alleged myriads of years required to effect such changes 
are purely imaginary, totally unworthy of those who seek the 
fundamental facts of science; and they ought not to be used as 
the foundation of arguments against "the veracity of the 
Mosaic record. It is my firm persuasion that the more closely 
we study the actual conditions of the earth and its true o'eo- 
