GENESIS VIII.

S the one hundred and twenty years of grace drew to a close, the wicked world ripened for judgment. Those who should have witnessed a good confession for God, allied themselves with the ungodly and became as they were; the earth was filled with violence, and "all flesh had corrupted his way upon the earth." The long-suffering of Jehovah is well-nigh spent, and a week before the final ruin arrives, "the Lord said unto Noah, Come thou and all thy house into the ark; for yet seven days, and I will cause it to rain upon the earth. And Noah went in, and his sons, and his wife, and his sons' wives with him into the ark." "And it came to pass on the seventh day the waters of the flood were upon the earth. The rain was upon the earth forty days and forty nights. The waters increased and bare up the ark, and it was lifted above the earth. The high hills were covered; all flesh died that moved upon the earth; every living substance was destroyed; and the waters prevailed upon the earth an hundred and fifty days." But "God remembered Noah and every living thing that was with him in the ark. A wind passed over the earth and the waters asswaged; the fountains of the deep and the windows of heaven were stopped. And the ark rested in the seventh month, on the seventeenth day of the month, upon the mountains of Ararat. In the tenth month, on the first day of the month, were the tops of the mountains seen. And at the end of forty days Noah sent forth a raven which went to and fro until the waters were dried up. Also he sent forth a dove to see if the waters were abated from off the face of the ground. But the dove found no rest for the sole of her foot, and she returned unto him into the ark. He stayed yet seven days, and again he sent forth the dove, and it came to him in the evening, and in her mouth was an olive leaf plucked off; so Noah knew that the waters were abated from off the earth. He stayed yet other seven days and sent forth the dove, which returned not again to him any more. And Noah removed the covering of the ark; and looked, and behold, the face of the ground was dry. And God spake unto Noah, saying, Go forth of the ark, thou, and thy wife, and thy sons, and thy sons' wives with thee. And Noah went forth, and builded an

altar unto the Lord, and offered burnt-offerings on the altar." Such, in brief, is the narrative of the Noachian deluge, told in the simple grandeur of the words of Scripture.

"The ark rested upon the mountains of Ararat" (ver. 4). There is no foundation in the Bible for the belief, that the ark rested on the top of the lofty mountain known in modern times by the name of Ararat. Josephus copied, from some older writers, the popular tradition of the particular place where the ark first touched the dry land when the waters began to abate. "The ark," says the Jewish historian, "rested on the top of a certain mountain in Armenia." And he proceeds to tell us that the "Armenians continued even in his day to call the mountain 'Apobaterion,' or the place of descent; that Berosus the Chaldean when describing the flood goes on thus: It is said that some part of this ship is still in Armenia, at the mountain of the Korduaion (Kurdistan); and that some of the people carry off pieces of the bitumen, which they take away, and use chiefly as amulets for keeping away evils;"" and he quotes Nicolaus of Damascus in support of the special mountain, who refers to it under the name of "Baris." But neither Josephus nor the older historians held the impression generally current in modern times, that the loftiest peak of the range of Ararat was the spot. There is nothing in the Mosaic account which demands the belief that the highest points of this range were covered by the flood. Such localities could not be inhabited by man; and the high hills under the whole heavens may only have been such as were reached by man, or came under the eyes of Noah, as he looked forth on the dark waters of the deluge. The popular imagination, however, appears at a very early time to have assigned to the highest mountain of the range the glory of having received on its summit the ark of Noah. This notion still holds its place in the east. The Persian name for Ararat is "Kuh-i-Nuh," or the mountain of Noah.

The use of the name, Ararat, appears to have been confined anciently to the Jews, and to one or two of the nations in the valley of the Tigris. Mr. Layard has traced it in a cuneiform inscription containing a list of the kings conquered by the Assyrian monarch, Sargon, the successor of Shalmanezer, about seven hundred and seventy years before the Christian era. "In the Khorsabad inscription," he says, "Arghistis is called king of War-ar-di, apparently the genitive case of War-ar-ad, a name that may be identified with the biblical Ararath, the kingdom of Armenia."

A glance at the map, illustrative of the supposed site of Eden, will

indicate to the reader the broken, mountainous character of the tract which stretches from the Grecian Archipelago, in an easterly direction, to the shores of the Caspian. The range of Ararat holds a distinct place. The loftiest peak, or Great Ararat, rises to the height of nearly 17,300 feet above the level of the sea, being more than 1,500 feet higher than Mount Blanc. The other peak of the mountain, or Little Ararat, is more than 13,000 feet above the sea level. When we think of the imposing grandeur of the former as it stands out clad in perpetual snow, which reaches from its summit nearly 3000 feet in the direction of the valleys, and of the dark-looking desolation of much of the mountain below the snow line, we can easily understand how the popular imagination would not be slow to claim it as the fit restingplace for the ark, when the flood abated from off the earth. Ararat can be seen at a great distance. Mr. Layard saw it when about one hundred and fifty-five miles distant. "After," he says, "a wearisome and indeed dangerous ride, we found ourselves on a snowy platform, variegated with Alpine plants. The tiny streams which trickled through the ice were edged with forget-me-nots of tenderest blue, and with many well remembered European flowers. I climbed up a solitary rock to take bearings of the principal peaks around us. A sight as magnificent as unexpected awaited me. Far to the north, and high above the dark mountain ranges which spread like a troubled sea beneath my feet, rose one solitary cone of unspotted white sparkling in the rays of the sun. Its form could not be mistaken; it was Mount Ararat." A nearer view is equally striking. It appeared, says Sir. R. K. Porter, "as if the highest mountains of the world had been piled upon each other to form this one sublime immensity of rocks, earth, and The icy peaks of its double heads rose majestically into the clear and cloudless heavens; the sun blazed bright upon them, and the reflection sent forth a dazzling radiance equal to other suns. My eye, not able to rest for any length of time upon the blinding glory of its summits, wandered down the apparently interminable sides, till I could no longer trace their vast lines in the mist of the horizon-when an irrepressible impulse immediately carrying my eye upwards, again refixed my gaze upon the awful glare of Ararat."

snow.

The way in which reference is made to Ararat in the Bible, scarcely leaves a doubt that Moses did not point to the highest peak as the resting-place of the ark. His own expression here is "The mountains of Ararat;" clearly indicating some convenient spot in this mountain range. The descent, on the part of Noah and his family, from the top

VOL. I.

2 D

of the highest peak to the plains below, would have been next to impossible. That divine care and goodness which had watched over this household with such constancy, would not fail to guide the ark to a resting-place, from which there would be easy access to the valleys in which the beasts that had been preserved were to find their nourishment, and in which the chosen household were to enter on all the arts in which they had been instructed before the terrible catastrophe overtook men. And Scripture usage points to this. After the sons of Sennacherib, king of Assyria, had slain their father, we are told that "they escaped into the land of Armenia, literally Ararat 2 Kings xix. 3, and Isa. xxxvii. 38). Mr. Layard has pointed out an interesting corroboration of this verse, in the existence of an Armenian tradition, that, after these men had done this wicked deed, they came into Armenia and founded two dynasties. Again, Jeremiah referring to some of the nations which God was to send against Babylon, says, "Call together against her the kingdoms of Ararat, Minni, and Ashchenaz" (li. 27). Mount Ararat stood in the centre of the locality known by that name. It seems, then, clear enough from these references, that we have to do here with mountains in a particular tract, and not with one mountain-not with Great Ararat. The important bearing which this has on the theory of a local deluge, will at once be apparent. Any flood which could have covered Ararat's snow-clad peak, would have been sufficient to put under water the greater part of the globe itself. Indeed, those who have taken it for granted that Great Ararat is referred to by Moses, have found in this a new argument for the likelihood of a universal deluge.

The mountain system, at which we have already glanced in considering the probable site of Eden, is now more fully before us in connection with the deluge. The Ararat range may indeed be regarded as, more or less, connected with all the rest. It is connected with the Caucasus by a chain which turns from the main body towards the south, and culminates in Great Ararat. It meets the Taurus on the south by its outliers, and the Cicilian Taurus, again, meets the Lebanon on the northern borders of Syria. We have thus, more or less, closely related to Ararat-1. The Caucasian Mountains. These rise near Anapa, situated on the Black Sea, at a point where the comparatively narrow tract between this sea and that of Azov opens into the vast region to the east. They stretch diagonally across that great tract which lies between the Black and the Caspian Seas, and which, on the north of the Caucasus, is characterized by physical features of a kind highly

suggestive, as we shall see, of a period when it must have been under water. A great branch breaks off about the middle of this range, stretches to the south, and forks east and west. The one limb passes along the eastern shore of the Black Sea, until, on the confines of ancient Colchis, it meets the range which passes along the southern shores of the Euxine. The other, grander and vaster, stretches in a southerly direction, and terminates in lofty Ararat. It then shoots out into the mountains of Persia, and other neighbouring straggling ranges. Much light has recently been shed on the special physical geology of the Caucasus and associated regions by M. von Behaghel, M. Abich, and others. Looking at the tract of country connected with its northern slopes, limestone conglomerate (breccia), containing shells, to be still found on the shores of the Black and the Caspian Seas, and black alluvial soil, are associated with the recent volcanic rocks. Nearer the central ridge, limestone, penetrated by veins of quartz, and clay slates are the chief deposits. The southern slopes show green sandstones, alternating with thin strata of limestones, and more or less associated with masses of a well-marked volcanic origin. Taking the district from Tiflis, which lies to the north of Ararat, about midway between Great Ararat and the Central Caucasus, to the shores of the Black Sea, beds of limestone and deep alluvium occur associated with greenstones. The valleys to the south of Tiflis are covered with deep alluvial soil, and in the heights granitic rocks are found associated with recent limestone and tertiary strata. The alluvium is everywhere mixed with the debris of these rocks. M. von Behaghel's notice of Ararat will convey a good impression of what the so-called Armenian Range is like geologically. In quoting this description, however, the reader must bear in mind that it was written in 1831. Since that date much more information has been obtained; and while, in the main, his notes are verified, the result is, that much older rocks have been observed in the mountains to the south of the Black Sea than in those lying to the north, and reaching from its shores to the Caspian. Near Constantinople the oldest type of the Devonian occurs, and Devonian strata can now be traced in the range which runs at a distance along the shores of the Black Sea on the south, even to the foot of Ararat and into Persia.

The extensive plain," says M. von Behaghel, "forty or fifty miles in width, round Ararat, is formed, in some measure, by the expansion of the valley of the Araxes, which, commencing a few miles east of the salt mines of Kulpe, is said to terminate in a wide sweep south-east of Little Ararat. It is almost a dead level throughout, except within a