scribed in the story
is impossible, or at any rate highly improbable; or, on the other hand,
that it is consonant with probability. In the former case, the narrative
must be suspected or rejected; in the latter, no such summary verdict
can be given: on the contrary, it must be admitted that the story may be
true. And then, if certain strangely prevalent canons of criticism are
accepted, and if the evidence that an event might have happened is to be
accepted as proof that it did happen, Assyriologists will be at liberty
to congratulate one another on the "confirmation by modern science" of
the authority of their ancient books.

It will be interesting, therefore, to inquire how far the physical
structure and the other conditions of the region in which Surippak
was situated are compatible with such a flood as is described in the
Assyrian record.

The scene of Hasisadra's adventure is laid in the broad valley, six or
seven hundred miles long, and hardly anywhere less than a hundred
miles in width, which is traversed by the lower courses of the rivers
Euphrates and Tigris, and which is commonly known as the "Euphrates
valley." Rising, at the one end, into a hill country, which gradually
passes into the Alpine heights of Armenia; and, at the other, dipping
beneath the shallow waters of the head of the Persian Gulf, which
continues in the same direction, from north-west to south-east, for some
eight hundred miles farther, the floor of the valley presents a gradual
slope, from eight hundred feet above the sea level to the depths of the
southern end of the Persian Gulf. The boundary between sea and land,
formed by the extremest mudflats of the delta of the two rivers, is
but vaguely defined; and, year by year, it advances seaward. On the
north-eastern side, the western frontier ranges of Persia rise abruptly
to great heights; on the south-western side, a more gradual ascent leads
to a table-land of less elevation, which, very broad in the south, where
it is occupied by the deserts of Arabia and of Southern Syria, narrows,
northwards, into the highlands of Palestine, and is continued by
the ranges of the Lebanon, the Antilebanon, and the Taurus, into the
highlands of Armenia.

The wide and gently inclined plain, thus inclosed between the gulf
and the highlands, on each side and at its upper extremity, is
distinguishable into two regions of very different character, one of
which lies north, and the other south of the parallel o