FOOTNOTES

(1) In May 1849 the Tigris at Bagdad rose 22-1/2 feet--5 feet
above its usual rise--and nearly swept away the town. In 1831 a
similarly exceptional flood did immense damage, destroying 7000
houses. See Loftus, Chaldea and Susiana, p. 7.

(2) See the instructive chapter on Hasisadra's flood in Suess,
Das Antlitz der Erde, Abth. I. Only fifteen years ago a
cyclone in the Bay of Bengal gave rise to a flood which covered
3000 square miles of the delta of the Ganges, 3 to 45 feet deep,
destroying 100,000 people, innumerable cattle, houses, and
trees. It broke inland on the rising ground of Tipperah, and may
have swept a vessel from the sea that far, though I do not know
that it did.

(3) See Cernik's maps in Petermanns Mittheilungen,
Erganzungashefte 44 and 45, 1875-76.

(4) I have not cited the dimensions given to the ships in most
translations of the story, because there appears to be a doubt
about them. Haupt (Keilinschriftliche Sindfluth-Bericht,
p. 13) says that the figures are illegible.

(5) It is probable that a slow movement of elevation of the land
at one time contributed to the result--perhaps does so still.

(6) At a comparatively recent period, the littoral margin of the
Persian Gulf extended certainly 250 miles farther to the
northwest than the present embouchure of the Shatt-el Arab.