which the waters of the streams which flow
down the sides of the basin are now dissipated by evaporation. I am
acquainted with no evidence that the present Iranian basin was ever
occupied by the sea; but the accumulations of gravel over a great extent
of its surface indicate long-continued water action. It is, therefore,
a fair presumption that large lakes have covered much of its present
deserts, and that they have dried up by the operation of the same
changed climatal conditions as those which have reduced the Caspian and
the Dead Sea to their present dimensions. [11]

Thus it would seem that the Euphrates valley, the centre of the fabled
Noachian deluge, is also the centre of a region covering some millions
of square miles of the present continents of Europe, Asia, and Africa,
in which all the facts, relevant to the argument, at present known,
converge to the conclusion that, since the miocene epoch, the essential
features of its physical geography have remained unchanged; that it has
neither been depressed below the sea, nor swept by diluvial waters since
that time; and that the Chaldaean version of the legend of a flood in
the Euphrates valley is, of all those which are extant, the only one
which is even consistent with probability, since it depicts a local
inundation, not more severe than one which might be brought about by a
concurrence of favourable conditions at the present day; and which might
probably have been more easily effected when the Persian Gulf extended
farther north. Hence, the recourse to the "glacial epoch" for some event
which might colourably represent a flood, distinctly asserted by
the only authority for it to have occurred in historical times, is
peculiarly unfortunate. Even a Welsh antiquary might hesitate over the
supposition that a tradition of the fate of Moel Tryfaen, in the glacial
epoch, had furnished the basis of fact for a legend which arose among
people whose own experience abundantly supplied them with the needful
precedents. Moreover, if evidence of interchanges of land and sea are
to be accepted as "confirmations" of Noah's deluge, there are plenty of
sources for the tradition to be had much nearer than Wales.

The depression now filled by the Red Sea, for example, appears to be,
geologically, of very recent origin. The later deposits found on its
shores, two or three hundred feet above the sea level, contain no
remains older than those of the present fauna; while, as I have alr