herdsmen in the neighbourhood of "Ur of the Chaldees," near its
western limit, could hardly have been unacquainted with the
comparatively elevated plateau of the Syrian desert which lay
close at hand. But, surely, we must suppose the Biblical writer
to be acquainted with the highlands of Palestine and with the
masses of the Sinaitic peninsula, which soar more than 8000 feet
above the sea, if he knew of no higher elevations; and, if so,
he could not well have meant to refer to mere hillocks when he
said that "all the high mountains which were under the whole
heaven were covered" (Genesis vii. 19). Even the hill-country of
Galilee reaches an elevation of 4000 feet; and a flood which
covered it could by no possibility have been other than
universal in its superficial extent. Water really cannot be got
to stand at, say, 4000 feet above the sea-level over Palestine,
without covering the rest of the globe to the same height. Even
if, in the course of Noah's six hundredth year, some prodigious
convulsion had sunk the whole region inclosed within "the
horizon of the geographical knowledge" of the Israelites by that
much, and another had pushed it up again, just in time to catch
the ark upon the "mountains of Ararat," matters are not much
mended. I am afraid to think of what would have become of a
vessel so little seaworthy as the ark and of its very numerous
passengers, under the peculiar obstacles to quiet flotation
which such rapid movements of depression and upheaval would
have generated.

Thus, in view, not, I repeat of the recondite speculations of
infidel philosophers, but in the face of the plainest and most
commonplace of ascertained physical facts, the story of the
Noachian Deluge has no more claim to credit than has that of