4 
THE BOOK OF THE GREAT SEA-DRAGONS. 
be spent; our hearts die within us before the glozing 
demons intent to howl “ Io triumphe” over the lost 
Islands and shining Shores of a conquered world. 
From the now bleak and unapproachable Poles, to the 
navel of our Parent Earth; from the snows and swamps 
of Ladoga, to the fervid Sands of Bengal, everywhere, in 
every Zone, continue unanswerable Memories of this 
happy, this Golden Age. The harmless Pachydermata, 
Dinotherium, and his kindred Giants, for which our 
impoverished and curse-stricken Planet can now find no 
cradle warm enough, then ranged the whole world. The 
thermal Earth and Ocean, bathed in light, sustained a 
thousand Genera of vast Animals and Vegetables, which 
retreated before the coming Cold to the Equator, and 
even there, eventually withered and died out in an un- 
genial and freezing Clime. The fires of our little Sun 
sufficed them not, the dank Shadows of approaching 
Doom paralysed, and the leaden Hand of transformed 
Time speedily swept them into dust and oblivion. The 
iceberg of Thule, and the Patagonian Wastes, Irak, 
Arabia Petraea, and the illimitable Savannahs and Prai¬ 
ries of the New World, grave their manifold bones. 
2. Primaeval Earth, rejoicing in the Benison of God, 
pales in the paenal fire about to wrap her in ruin, and 
which shall finally rase her utterly out. “ Adam,” 
the Lucifer and Protagonist of Antiquity, doing mis¬ 
prision against Sovereignty, turns the weapons of Loy¬ 
alty upon his Liege, and plunges them into the Bowels 
of his Mother Earth. Forsaken of Angels, groaning, 
she bringeth forth grim Monsters, which ravage her 
Garden, the Locusts that consume it away. The angry 
and horrent waters too, loosened, swell into a frightful 
roar, leap upon a thousand Plains, and greedily swallow 
them up. 
Man, panic stricken, abandons the vast antique De¬ 
fences and Outworks of Creation to the ruthless Surge, 
and Leviathan, flying to Himmala the High, the Battle¬ 
ments of the Moon; His Seed overflow The Mountains, 
and spread over all the Tableland of the World : and the 
giant Nephilim, born to the Sons of Jehovah, of the 
Daughters of Eve, haunted by Terror, traverse the me¬ 
naced Globe, building Stupendous Towers and Citadels 
whereunto to retreat, when sorely pressed by the antici¬ 
pated, the inevitable Flood. Atalantis, and Europa, and 
arid Afric, then made one wide Asian Continent, over 
the Girdle of which, to this hour, remain the mighty 
Works of these most mighty men: Sepulchral looking 
abodes, fit for the gloomy gods, whether in wondering 
Peruvia, Tuscan Italy, or Araby the Swart. Unhappy 
Giants ! the mountainous Piles are cast prone down, and 
the Winds there howl the dies irae to your dolorous 
ghosts. 
And, lo ! somnambulist Geology, seizing our trembling 
arm, and pointing to the dim skull but yesterday brought 
in a half fossil state from the Caucasian Sewalik, reveals 
the ashes of an antediluvian, once dipped in the Sin-bap¬ 
tismal Flood. And, at our feet, behold the Carcasses of 
the cruel Carnivora, that afflicted the impious Adamites; 
gathered, whether from Austral, or Borean Regions, or 
the hot wastes of Barbary, or the Pampas of Texas, and 
Ecuador; no feline of our Time can compare with these 
Elephantine Tigers, these huge and spectral Bears : there 
they lie, unconscious of the daedal curse which pounced 
upon their savage Brood, and blotted the brute Amalek 
from under Heaven. 
And reverend History,—“ Quae quo propius aberat ab 
ortu et divina progenie hoc melius ea fortasse, quae erant 
vera, cernebat,”—offers at the Altar of the Temple, the 
consanguineous Faith of Jew and Gentile, Scythian, and 
Indian, in the Immutable Creed. And shuddering Na¬ 
ture leads us to that remote Period of violence and 
Wrong, where, in Company again with speculative 
Geology, we muse over the Wrecks of Eden, torn, de¬ 
filed, trampled upon by these once vital things. The 
all-enjoying denizens of the erst brimful World, invaded 
by the soundless and sinuous Serpent, flee, they melt 
away before the Legion of insatiate Fiends that follow in 
his Train, and are at length in peril of total extirpation : 
Only here and there, in the most Modern deposits of 
the Epoch, we detect their fainting trace; whilst the 
bleached bones of vengeance, strown plentifully to the 
last, indicate the fulfilment of the Ends for which it was 
ordained, by an outraged and Retributive Providence. 
And now the sad and majestical Drama, Men and 
Gods battling upon the Theatre of a darkening World, 
marches to its third and final scene—Death and Perdi¬ 
tion evermore. 
The Scorner, compelled by the most indubitable evi¬ 
dence, grants the fact of The Deluge, but refers it to 
Ages infinitely removed from that in which alone the 
Inspired Historian will have it to be. He also despises 
the facts of the simultaneous destruction of Man, and the 
entire submergence of the Earth, insisted upon by all the 
written and oral Scriptures of every nation under the 
Sun. Glancing the enormous rocks and boulders of 
Granite, and other debris, outspread over the actual con¬ 
tinents in a given certain direction, he charges them to 
existing Causes, in defiance of the most positive mathe¬ 
matical deduction; and still further, requires an Eternity 
of Time to place them where they are found. The 
Noachic Ark he laugheth at, and boldly questions the 
device thereof, with a sneer at its living contents: He 
travesties all men, all things, even Jupiter; quenching 
all light, all glory in his benighted Spirit, dancing in¬ 
ebriate over the Volcanic Abyss of expectant Hades. 
Nevertheless, The Word, Reader! The Word abideth 
sure. The Backbone of the World is broken, and im¬ 
mense fractures running in divergent lines from the Poles 
to the Equator, verify the Seat of Dislocation. Whether 
the stiffening Atlas broke down of his own gravity, or 
sliddered, it matters little, he Fell, the Fountains of the 
Great Deep were broken up, and he was stifled in the 
Sea: “ Quia ipse super maria fundavit eum: et super 
flumina praeparavit eum.” For the subsidence of a mass 
sufficient to shatter in its descent the Body of the whole 
Earth, must inevitably have displaced an equivalent 
measure of Water, and driven it over the rest of the 
whole Land. Then the daedal Wave leaping from the 
yelling Abysm, rushed upon the Polar Zones, rending 
asunder the hardest rocks, and hurling them like sand 
over the drowning World: And onward rolling with a 
proportionably diminishing force, at last subdued the far 
Countree of our lost Forefathers’ Home, 
“ Omne cum Proteus pecus egit altos 
Viscere Montes; 
Piscium et summa genus hsesit ulmo.” 
Nor wonder we that a vessel of wood did safely ride the 
Tamed Element which had just extinguished the Globe; 
for the destructive Forces, seated in the Axes, the farther 
we proceed from that centre, the less their effect, until 
