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there of changes still earlier in date? changes, that is, which occurred 
more than 4,000 years ago. The next point of evidence is, that the whole 
ravine to a height of some 300 to 400 feet was filled with fresh water. 
How is that proved ? Because you find remains of ancient beaches traceable 
the whole way round at uniform levels, varying in height from 30 to 200, 
300, or even 400 feet. But how can we tell that the water then was fresh 
water ? Because there are shells found in these beaches, and the shells are 
invariably fresh- water shells, shells of exactly the same species as are found 
to this day in the Jordan. I was doubtful on this point when reading Mr. 
Tristram’s book, and being then working at the subject of the Dead Sea, I 
wrote and asked him if he had found any marine shells in these beaches, and 
he said in reply that there was not a trace of one, they were all recent 
fresh-water ones. Our next step back is then to show that the 
Dead Sea was neither a salt sea, nor a small sea, but an enormous 
fresh-water lake. The fresh-water lake was gradually dried up, not 
quickly nor uniformly, for it left marked beaches only at intervals, whereas 
had it dried up quickly, it would have left debris all over the shore. 
Allowing, then, time enough for the formation and slow drying up of the 
fresh-water lake, what comes before that ? We have yet to account for the 
salt. The only way we can imagine such an enormous mass of rock salt to 
have been formed — the mountain is about eight miles long, half a mile wide, 
3C0 to 400 feet high, and how deep no one knows — the only reasonable 
way is to suppose that an arm of the sea was shut in here, dried up, and 
left the salt. Now, when you have accounted for the rock salt, where are 
you ? Still in the post-tertiary period ; not a single geological formation 
proper has been touched. We started, then, in the days of Abraham, nearly 
4,000 years ago, with a small, probably brackish sea, before which was 
a fresh-water lake, before that an arm of the sea, and still nothing but 
post-tertiary remains. How much time have we to dispose of for these 
changes ? From Abraham to the Deluge is about 360 years. I ask, then, 
is it credible, when 4,000 years have done next to nothing, we should suppose 
that the previous 360 did so much ? More than this 360 years we cannot 
allow, if the current view of the Deluge be true, since if the sea swept across 
this district at the time of the Deluge, all traces of a preceding fresh-water 
lake must have been destroyed, and we are thus obliged to suppose that the 
lake, at all events, was formed and dried up within 360 years of the Deluge. 
But I am not sure even of all that 360 years, for I have started from the 
point when I know the cities of Sodom, &c., were standing ; how long they had 
been so, I do not know ; they may have stood for a considerable part of the 
360 years. I say, again, is it credible that such enormous changes should 
have taken place in so short an interval, when the last 4,000 years have done 
so little ? Beyond the Deluge we have but 1,600 years to the Creation ; to 
which period, therefore, must the whole of the geological formations be 
referred, if such views as Mr. Hopkins’s are to be maintained. I think 
that is a strong case of what history can tell us as to geological changes, 
and I cannot but wish simple facts like these were more looked to, before 
